Chapter Three

Culture Informs Behavior

We use the word “culture” fairly arbitrarily, citing it to explain why things don’t change, won’t change, or can’t change. We talk about the culture of a society or country, school cultures, business cultures, culture clashes, and emerging cultures. A powerful force, culture anchors strategy and creates the environment where the best people can do their best work. It’s that subtle yet powerful driver that leaders strive—often futilely—to influence. Leaders who aspire to challenge the ordinary realize they need to pay more attention to the culture they help create so they can understand it, guide it, and tie it to their strategies for growth.

What Do We Mean by “Culture”?

Legends tend to have differing adaptations; the truth has no versions. Both influence—either intentionally or unintentionally—the cultures we build. Corporate culture—the pattern of shared assumptions that the group has adopted and adapted over a period of time—develops in much the same way as legends and traditions do. Edgar Schein offers this model for understanding the factors that influence culture:¹

Artifacts include all the phenomena we see, hear, and feel when we encounter a group. They include the visible products of the groups, such as the physical environment, language, technology, products, clothing, manner of address, stories, and observed ritual.

Observing artifacts and behaviors is easier than understanding them, however. For example, the Egyptians and Mayans both built visible pyramids, but the meaning of the pyramids differed in each culture—tombs in the former and temples as well as tombs in the latter. Someone not schooled in both cultures might understandably reach the wrong conclusion. In organizational cultures too, an outsider evaluating artifacts poses myriad problems because we tend to assess in terms of our own backgrounds, not always seeing what lies in front of us and not coming to the same conclusions as those in the organization do.

For instance, an informal organization where people wear jeans, call each other by their first names, and walk around frequently, might seem ineffective or nonprofessional to the outsider. On the other hand, a formal organization with everyone wearing business suits, sitting at desks, and not talking to one another may seem to lack innovation. Any observer will see the same artifacts and behaviors, but attaching the correct judgment to them won’t always be accurate or easy. That’s why we have to dig deeper to discover the values and assumptions that explain how and why a culture exists.

Values: The Foundation of Your Legacy

Espoused values reflect those perceptions that leaders consider “correct.” Over time, the group learns that certain values work to reduce uncertainty in critical areas of the organization’s functioning. As the espoused values continue to work, they gradually transform into an articulated set of beliefs, norms, and operational rules of behavior. Eventually these values become embodied in an ideology or organizational philosophy that serves as a guide for dealing with ambiguity or difficult events.

When a solution to a problem works repeatedly, people start to take it for granted. The hypothesis, supported only by a hunch, comes gradually to be treated as a reality. Basic assumptions become so taken-for-granted that no one challenges them. Therefore, they influence behavior, even when people don’t mention them.

Learning all these nuances doesn’t happen automatically. Sometimes organizations engage in “on-boarding” in an attempt to teach newcomers these inter-workings of the company. More often, however, that which defines the heart of the culture will not be revealed. Only as the new people gain permanent status will they be allowed to enter the inner sanctum and share the secrets.

Two problems. First, some people never navigate to the inner sanctum, and second, the journey takes too long. Star performers tend toward impatience. They want to know immediately what will be expected of them, by whom, and under what conditions. They will want to hit your ground running, eager to do a great job. Distractions related to navigation to the inner sanctum will just annoy and de-motivate them. (Distractions annoy and de-motivate everyone, for that matter.)

Corporate values describe the principles and standards that guide an organization’s ethical and business decisions. Organizations typically list things like leadership, integrity, quality, customer satisfaction, people working together, a diverse and involved team, good corporate citizenship, and enhancing shareholder value. Though all of these are laudable, which would a successful company not value? A list of ideals that any organization would promote doesn’t really distinguish your company from any other, and you’re not likely to have any arguments about the importance of embracing these ideals. But how? How do you translate value on paper into value in practice?

Leaders in exceptional organizations realize their espoused values should address the thorny issues and provide a compass for navigating uncharted seas, even when the price of doing so is significant. Instead of writing these on a plaque in the foyer, leaders live these espoused values and expect others to as well. These values mean something and serve as criteria for making business decisions. They decide they will fire their most valued, high-potential person for a violation of these values. They grapple with the tough questions and develop a list of standards that serves as more than a nice poster; these values will serve as the bedrock of their strategy and give them the guidelines about how and what to change.

Change Orientation: The Will to Welcome Uncertainty

As stated earlier, “culture” represents that set of beliefs that govern behavior. We create it as we go along, sometimes consciously, often unconsciously. When companies embrace a change orientation, they consider innovation as part of the culture, not a process or project that they engage in for a given period of time. People innovate and change when they see a benefit—when they perceive that the change will improve their condition, not when someone else wants it.

For example, two of the biggest cultural changes in the United States during my lifetime have been smoking and littering cessation. In the 1950s, we thought nothing of dumping an entire bag of garbage on the parking lot as we left the Burger Palace. Similarly, until relatively recently, to enjoy a meal at a nice restaurant, a patron had to secure a “non-smoking” reservation or settle for “first available.” In both examples, people changed because they perceived an improvement—to their environment in the first case and to their personal health in the second.

Conversely, U.S. culture has not been able to reduce speeding violations, except through coercion. Now some municipalities have installed cameras that record unsuspecting motorists speeding. Several days after the infraction, the driver receives a ticket in the mail, along with a lovely picture of the car and driver. Arguably, this coercion influences drivers to slow down when they visit that area again, but in the short run, the cameras don’t reduce speeding violations.

Force doesn’t foster meaningful change in organizations either. People change when the pain of staying where they are overcomes the fear of change. Sometimes, however, people don’t perceive the pain before significant damage has occurred. Like insidious heart disease, symptoms of impending destruction may go unnoticed. The job of senior leaders is to build a culture of change, one that supports the long-term strategy of your company.

Truly great companies understand the difference between what should never change and what should be open to change—between what is sacrosanct and what is not. A well-conceived change effort, therefore, needs to protect core principles, the enduring character of an organization—the consistent identity that transcends trends, technology, product line, or services. Core principles provide the glue that holds an organization together through time.

Throughout history we can see examples of how people captured and exemplified their fundamental beliefs. The Declaration of Independence, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the Bible all offer examples of how people have written and adhered to their core creeds. Even when the organization grows, diversifies, or changes location, these beliefs provide enduring tenets and a set of timeless principles. Successful leaders don’t confuse, and don’t let their direct reports confuse, a change in operating practices with a change in core ideology.

It doesn’t happen easily, however. The root of culture is “cult,” a testament to the kind of thinking that can often guide decision-makers to adhere to a mindset that no longer works. But just as senior leaders can encourage cult-like thinking, they can stimulate a culture of change. A change in operating practices or strategy does not constitute a desertion of all that is “holy,” but only those organizations that create a true culture of change can help their people understand the difference. Once again, history offers examples.

We don’t ordinarily remember Ulysses S. Grant as someone who cowered easily. After all, under Grant’s leadership, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military, effectively ending the Civil War with the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s army at Appomattox. That hard-won victory came at a price, however, when Grant faced formidable adversaries like Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest. One of Grant’s friends reported that this particular southern general “was the only Confederate cavalryman of whom Grant stood in much dread.”

What caused Grant’s anxiety? A cavalry and military commander, Forrest distinguished himself as one the war’s most unusual figures. Less educated than many of his fellow officers, Forrest had amassed a fortune prior to the war as a planter, real estate investor, and slave trader. He was one of the few officers in either army to enlist as a private and be promoted to general officer and division commander. Possessing a gift for both strategy and tactics, Forrest created and established new doctrines for mobile forces, earning him the nickname “The Wizard of the Saddle.”²

We remember Forrest for the New York Tribune’s erroneous quote that Forrest stated that his strategy was to “git thar fustest with the mostest.” He actually said he “got there first with the most men,” a less colorful but more accurate explanation of Forrest’s success. Forrest didn’t realize at the time that he had defined the characteristics of a culture of change—and he did it before the pain of remaining the same overcame his fear of change.

Exceptional organizations follow Forrest’s example. They change pro-actively rather than reactively, and they do so quickly—not necessarily in accordance with a three-to-five-year strategy. Of course, leaders of exceptional organizations keep the mission and vision of the company in mind as they make decisions and force tradeoffs, but they do so at the speed of change—not the pace of the typical glacier.

You won’t get there first with the most or strike fear in the hearts of your competitors if you insist on adhering to the accepted, ordinary rules of the industry or your company’s status quo position. Just because “we’ve always done it that way” doesn’t mean you should do it that way in the future. As I always ask my clients, “If you weren’t already doing that, would you decide now to do it?” Playing in a bigger game does not require you do more of what you’re already doing; it demands thinking bigger. Breakthrough growth demands actively changing rules, mindsets, and habits. Fortunately, exceptional performers have both the capacity and desire to change all three.

While we’re embracing change, let’s not categorically jump on a pioneering bandwagon. As our history books also teach us, pioneers often ended up dead. The first people to cross the ocean, expand to the western United States, or explore outer space often met with unfortunate outcomes. The same happens in business. In the book Will and Vision, the authors found that just 9 percent of pioneers ended up the final winners in their market. Gillette didn’t pioneer the safety razor; Star did. Polaroid didn’t lead the way with the instant camera; Dubroni did. According to the authors, 64 percent of pioneers failed outright, and others took innovation to the finish line.³

So what’s a business leader to do? Get there first with the most? Or let the other company innovate while you rest on your laurels? The answer is neither, but a combination of both. Along with a picture of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the smart leader should put a picture of Custer at his last stand.

Innovation and change can cripple you as surely as change aversion can. The gold lies in a culture that embraces well-thought-out change but balances it with a realization that the status quo and traditional approaches offered some redeeming qualities. Success related to a culture of change relies on the people making the decisions. Those who take a disciplined approach to creativity but marry it to discipline stand to win. Those who carelessly bet on the wrong horse just because it’s a new horse stand to lose.

Psychology teaches us that during uncertain times, most people look to established authorities for the answer. The patient who receives disturbing lab results turns to the authority—the physician—for guidance. When we want to make a big financial investment, we ask financial experts. When our kids act up, we seek the advice of our parents or friends. We perceive expertise, often without irrefutable evidence that it exists.

These are ordinary responses, but successful leaders don’t settle for the ordinary. They observe and react. They consider conventional wisdom, the opinions of trusted advisors, and thought leaders in the field. But then they go beyond.

You can start building a change culture by replacing large-scale, amorphous objectives with results-driven goals that focus on quick, measurable gains. An empowered employee at the lowest possible level of the organization should “own” each goal for which he or she will be held accountable, and you should be flexible enough to react quickly to market shifts or new market opportunities. That’s how agility happens.

Steering an aircraft carrier presents many more challenges than turning a speedboat. Therefore, organizations that attract the best talent need to resemble a harbor full of agile speedboats, not a port for a monolith. The formula for building this harbor is simple: reinvent, reengineer, and become the architect of your organization’s future. You’ll know you have the formula right when you see leaders continuously seeking new opportunities and overcoming challenges, delegating both decisions and tasks, people showing obvious commitment to continued improvement, and everyone showing a burning passion to succeed. When you get the formula right, a culture of change—where your best people will do their best work—can’t help but follow. These questions will help you determine whether you have a change-oriented culture:

• How prepared are you to make decisions you can implement immediately?

• Will people buy leader-only decisions?

• How do you evaluate risk?

• How willing are you to give up the comfort of the status quo?

• How have market changes demanded change of you?

• What speed do you prefer? Your people? The market demand?

To remain competitive and exceptional, a culture has to be one of incentive, tolerance, reward, experimentation, high risk tolerance, and a focus on the behaviors required to create that culture, not quick victories. Many organizations demanding more “innovation” simply want faster problem-solving, which will only return things to the status quo.

By definition, problem-solving involves the process of finding a solution to something that needs to change or a deviation from what you expected to happen. It requires a multistage process for moving an issue or situation from an undesirable to a more advantageous condition and typically involves a process for answering the following questions:

• What changed, when, and why?

• What is the tangible evidence that you have a problem?

• How can you measure the magnitude of the problem?

• What caused the change?

• Is this change or deviation consequential enough to spend time resolving it?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can start to evaluate alternatives and to overcome the obstacles that stand between them and a satisfactory resolution. There are many ways to do this, but too many organizations engage in ongoing problem-solving, usually returning things to the status quo and seldom really embracing innovation and change. Growth necessitates more. It entails a change of mindset—a commitment to innovation and improvement. As former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said, “The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.” The formula is simple: reinvent, reengineer, and become the architect of your organization’s future. But you can’t do any of these without learning as you grow.

The Learning Environment: Your Laboratory for Exceptional Ideas

Innovation stands squarely at the heart of a learning culture—with rigidity and fear as its arch enemies. Fear causes us to build silos that serve as our fortresses. When we fear, we go into protection mode, but reinvention prevents fortress-building. Star performers don’t need shielding, so they resent fortresses. They adapt and adopt quickly and want an organization that does too. If you wait to react, it may be too late. As the senior leader, your job is to build a culture of change, one that supports the long-term strategy of your company. To do that, you’ll need to encourage learning.

The term “learning culture” confronts yet another paradox. Culture acts as a stabilizer, a traditional force, a way of making things predictable. How then, by its very nature, can a culture become learning oriented, adoptive, and innovative? How can a leader stabilize both perpetual learning and change?

A learning culture must contain a core shared assumption that the appropriate way for an organization to improve involves proactive problemsolving and learning. If the culture reflects fatalistic assumptions of passive acceptance, learning will become more and more difficult as the rate of change in the environment increases. Therefore, leaders must ultimately make the process of learning—not any given solution to any specific problem—part of the culture. As the problems you encounter change, so will your learning methods. In a learning culture, leaders don’t imagine that truth resides in any one source (themselves) or method. Rather, they find truth in experienced practitioners in whom they place their trust; they experiment and live with errors until a better solution is found.

As Peter Senge noted, as the world becomes “more complex and interdependent, the ability to think systematically, to analyze fields of forces, to understand their joint causal effects on each other, and to abandon simple linear causal logic in favor of complex mental models will become more critical to learning.”⁴ Leaders of learning cultures recognize the limitations in their own wisdom and experience, relying heavily on the best thinking of their top performers. In this scenario, alignment occurs among leadership style, culture, and virtuoso needs.

Learning organizations expect failure. They realize that if failure doesn’t happen, the company isn’t pushing hard enough. We will remember Steve Jobs for his enormous successes, but what about the Lisa? Setbacks didn’t stop Jobs, and they won’t hinder successful leaders in the future either. These leaders learn from their mistakes—all the while keeping their own motivation high so that they can encourage others to go through the inevitable pain of learning and change. They control their own emotions to manage anxiety—theirs and others’—as learning and change further characterize the culture of their organizations. They also do the following:

• Refuse to settle for mediocrity in themselves, their direct reports, the company’s products and services, customer loyalty, or financial gain.

• Create the intrinsic/extrinsic cycle. Make information that is implied, inherent, and basic open, clear, and unambiguous. Similarly, make overt, unequivocal knowledge fundamental and essential.

• Recognize what’s valuable to the organization, provide a central source for information and learning, and have someone appointed to determine who else in the organization needs the knowledge.

• Make knowledge digestible. Understand that if people can use it quickly and easily, they’ll internalize it. These leaders don’t have someone create a PowerPoint show or print a three-ring binder that will gather yet more dust on every topic that comes down the pike.

• Realize that knowledge training must appeal to the self-interest of the user. They should address speed and facility (ease of use), clearly define rewards (increased revenues, customer satisfaction), and consequences (accidents, loss of profits, personal firing).

• Identify sources of innovation and replicate them.

In general, leaders committed to learning discover where they’ve been successful by deconstructing successes so that those in the organization can replicate them. They understand why they’ve had great success, not just that they’ve had it. Additionally they find out what they and others can do to identify what has to happen to drive the organization to a higher level—not more volume, but more profit. They also eagerly examine failure and cause/effect relationships—not to assign blame, but to learn.

Although the aviation industry has had more than its share of business problems, they provide a shining example of what other companies can do to advance learning. For example, after an airliner crashes, there are no industry secrets. Airlines willingly reveal lessons learned. Everyone in the industry shares the common goal of making air travel safer, so individual airlines and the FAA require recurrent training. The airlines don’t overlook chances to learn from their own mistakes or those of others. They continually and consistently set new best practices and commit the necessary resources to make sure they keep pace with relevant changes. Imagine how this practice and dedication to learning would help non-aviation industries that would commit to examining how changing markets, demographics, and perceptions may affect their organizations. All action and learning starts with a clear decision to make them part of a culture.

Indecision: The Culture Killer

Excellent decisions are the coinage of the organizational realm. When senior leaders consistently make good decisions, little else matters; when they make bad decisions, nothing else matters. Any student of organizational development will tell you that a pivotal decision—or, more likely, a series of pivotal decisions—literally separated the businesses that flourished from those that floundered. Every success, mistake, opportunity seized, or threat mitigated started with a decision.

Success doesn’t happen without decisions, but neither do mistakes, except when the decision involves indecision—a kind of decision not to decide. When you play the toughest game you can play in the most competitive league you can enter, you will have mishaps and missteps, but indecision doesn’t have to be among them. However, the culture of too many organizations conspires against success. Decisions—good, bad, or decent—get stuck in the entrails of the organization, much as flotsam and jetsam accumulates on an untended beach. Companies create their own bottlenecks and harm themselves in ways that the competition never could. They become their own strongest competitors—the enemy within.

Leaders who aspire to create action-oriented, learning cultures recognize where and how bottlenecks occur in their organizations, and they understand the role they need to play in helping those in their chains of command assume decision-making responsibility. Here’s what they think and believe:

• All decisions are not created equal. Day-to-day implementation decisions should stay with the person who has responsibility for carrying them out. But the high-stakes decisions—those that affect the strategic direction of the company—have to remain at the senior level.

• Action trumps theory. Few decisions require 100 percent accuracy and precision. That’s why I advise clients to move on an idea when they’re 80 percent ready. The value of attaining the other 20 percent usually doesn’t justify the time and opportunities wasted. A decent decision that you put into action will give you more ROI than a brilliant idea that remains unexecuted or slowly implemented.

• Consensus is overrated. Although laudable in the abstract, holding out for universal agreement consumes too much time. Successful leaders usually learn the hard way to seek consensus only when they need the input of others in the group to make the decision and their ultimate support of it. Otherwise, consensus-building can create an obstacle to action and a formula for lowest-common-denominator compromise.

• Accountability saves the day. Ultimately, one person has to own the decision. One and only one person needs to serve as the single point of accountability—the person who has the right to make the decision, the ability to decide, and the power to commit the organization to act on it. This person should have a proven track record for solving unfamiliar problems, an awareness of relevant trade-offs, a bias for action, and a keen ability to anticipate consequences—both positive and negative.

The person who owns the decision-making rights and responsibilities will want to ask these questions:

1. Who else needs to contribute to this decision?

2. Who has to agree?

3. Who should be notified?

4. Who will carry it out?

Effective decision-making does not happen by accident. In most cases, executives have made a conscious, well-thought-out effort to make an effective decision. They have gained information to understand the problem that necessitates the decision; they have examined and evaluated numerous choices; and they have settled for nothing less than stellar data. Then, they did the courageous thing. They opted for the best, not the safest or most popular course of action—decisions that set a clear tone at the top of the organization.

Communication: Setting the Tone at the Top

Communication and information-sharing form the foundation for a strong organizational culture. Therefore, leaders who aspire to strengthen their cultures need to create a multichannel communication system that allows everyone to connect with everyone one else. This doesn’t mean that you must immediately purchase the latest technology for immediate access to each person. It also doesn’t imply that, in the interest of collegiality, everyone should be copied on every e-mail, an insidious invention of the devil that slows work across the world. It does mean that every need-to-know person stays in the loop and anyone must be able to communicate with anyone else, and everyone involved assumes that telling the truth is both desirable and expected. Of course, this kind of communication network can exist only when high trust exists among all participants and when leaders lead the way by trusting employees to have both the skill and motivation to improve.

Effective communication stands at the core of a change-oriented, learning organization, and an awareness of differing perceptions creates the core of that communication. People respond differently to messages because of the diversity of perceptions. Assumptions that do not take into account perceptual differences often lead to erroneous conclusions and trigger inappropriate behavioral responses. Such assumptions may directly cause conflict and unwarranted hostility.

For example, if the compliance officer imagines that the VP of sales is pressuring her for a quick turnaround on a decision because “he only cares about selling, not quality,” she may respond unfavorably. Similarly, if the VP of sales sees compliance as the “business prevention unit,” he may become defensive.

Our perceptions create the lenses through which we view the world; most conflicts occur when these world views differ. I’m reminded of an old joke about two elderly Southern gentlemen, Early and Floyd, who, while sitting on the veranda one evening sipping their mint juleps, notice a little frog who says to Earl, “Sir, I am a beautiful maiden whom a wicked witch has cursed by trapping me in this hideous amphibian’s body. But if you were to kiss me once, I would spring forth and remain your devoted love for the rest of your life.” Earl thinks for a minute, scoops up the little frog, and puts her in his pocket. In disbelief Floyd exclaims, “Earl! What are you doing? She is a beautiful maiden!” Earl shrugs and answers, “Floyd, at my age, I’d rather have a talking frog.”

When we start with the realization that the Earls of the world would rather have a talking frog, we can choose the words we use to communicate our own perceptions. Words give us the ability to represent the world through symbols, a skill that allows us to make sense of our world and gives us the tools we need to transmit perceptions from one person to another. Our choice of words helps to shape our reality, and our perception of reality influences our choice of words. The very words that empower us to create meaning with one another, however, can also create barriers between us because each of us assigns words the meaning we want them to have. The word itself doesn’t have a universal meaning, even though millions of pages of dictionaries exist for the sole purpose of helping us develop common reactions to words. Instead, words provide our code for transmitting our ideas to others. As people who have found themselves in heated, inane arguments will tell you, words can quickly turn into pesky little rascals that can be used in more than one way.

For instance, consider this newspaper headline: “Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted.” Probably the safety experts were advocating the use of seat belts, but based on the words alone, can we be sure? Intentionally or unintentionally, words can cause roadblocks to understanding.

For example, psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman conducted research through The LaughLab at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, which attracted more than 40,000 jokes and almost two million ratings. The following joke won:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?”

The operator says “Calm down. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says “OK, now what?”⁵

The dissimilar coding and decoding of words provides grist for the humor mill, but these mistakes don’t serve us well when we attempt to send a message in earnest.

Words give us the means for sharing ideas and expressing emotion, but they can also serve as barriers. Certainly, the hunter and the emergency service operator experienced a barrier to effective communication. The reasons for these barriers? We act as though meaning resides in words like some kind of chemical compound. Just because a thought makes perfect sense in our heads doesn’t, in any way, imply that anyone else will understand that idea in exactly the same way that we do.

Instead, words are arbitrary mixtures of letters that represent concepts. Because concepts differ, and because people assign symbols to concepts in different and often unpredictable ways, misunderstandings occur. So while we have no guarantees that communication will ever occur in the way we intend it to, we can learn ways to control the way a conversation goes and avoid the fate of the hunter’s friend.

First, be receiver-oriented and use specific language the receiver will understand. Although seemingly self-evident, not everyone can follow this directive. For example, yesterday I learned of yet another useless, vague term a client has decided to use. Human resources at a major hospital chain has determined that “at risk” employees will receive feedback about their performance issue and then “an initial reminder” about the problem. If the trouble persists, the employee will receive “an advanced reminder.” In my opinion, a “reminder” is a pop-up on your computer screen, a bing on a cell phone, or a piece of string on the wrist, not a veiled threat of termination.

HR, apparently in an attempt to act receiver oriented, wants to steer leaders away from dirty words like “reprimand” or “warning.” This sort of wrong-minded nuttiness does not represent receiver orientation. The receiver garners no benefit from politically correct but nebulous terminology.

On the one hand we need to be sensitive; on the other hand, we can’t sanitize our language to the point that we don’t understand each other or that we don’t represent reality. Fortunately, the use of specific language can help us strike that important balance.

People who use concrete language—exact precise words—rather than abstract language or jargon avoid confusion and let others understand exactly what they’re talking about. For instance, recently my youngest daughter took a job with a video game company, even though she majored in criminal justice in college and had no real technical training for the position. When she received an assignment that she didn’t understand, her brain routinely said, “You can’t do this,” but her pride said, “Oh, yes you can.”

Finally one day, her intrapersonal communication pattern backfired. Her boss asked her to troubleshoot a game, especially the HUD, to see if she could find the problems. Thinking that a HUD was a small German car, and having too much pride to ask for clarification, she spent the morning scouring the game trying to find the little car to see if she could discover the trouble in the game. Only after expressing her frustration to a coworker did she realize she should have been looking at the Heads Up Display.

Many industries and organizations have their own acronyms and jargon, and for the most part, these don’t cause communication breakdowns because people encode and decode them similarly. However, when communicating to a new person or someone outside the organization these kinds of words can prove troublesome.

In general, abstract words are unclear because they are broad in scope. They tend to lump things together, ignoring uniqueness or even subtle differences. Vague and nonspecific, abstract words describe things that cannot be sensed through one of the five senses. Words like attitude, communication, loyalty, commitment, thorough, high-caliber, improvement, and reliable all leave much room for interpretation

Conversely, concrete words describe things that we can talk about in behavioral terms or perceive by using one of our five senses. They clarify the sender’s meaning by narrowing the number of possibilities and tend to decrease the likelihood of misunderstanding.

A critical element of an action-oriented, learning culture, precise language helps you move ideas to action. On the other hand, if you engage in inaccurate or vague message-sending, action and learning stall. In their eagerness to please, people will do something, but not necessarily what you had in mind.

I experienced this reality in a training session, ironically focused on better message-sending. I asked the participants to turn to a certain page and then gave them the instructions of what they needed to do. Unfortunately, I had neglected to put on my reading glasses before making the assignment, so I read the wrong page number. Dutifully the participants went to the page I had assigned and attempted to do what I had asked them to do. No one mentioned that my instructions made absolutely no sense, and no one called my attention to the fact that I had sent them on an impossible mission.

They worked together for the allotted time and then came together as a large group to debrief. After one or two minutes, I realized that things weren’t adding up. Quickly I concluded that they had gone to the wrong page, or the right page from the instructions, but the wrong page as far as making sense. Keep in mind, I had absolutely no power over them, and in the low-threat environment of a training session, they had no reason whatsoever to feel intimidated about asking me for clarification. Still, they didn’t. They did what they thought I wanted them to do and wasted valuable time.

Leaders who want to establish the kind of culture that will position them to create an exceptional advantage have to assume the onus for making sure others have decoded the message in the way you intended it to be decoded. You can do this in two ways. Encourage questions in general, and ask specific questions in particular situations. For example, you might inquire, “Do you see any roadblocks to getting this done?” If I had done that in the training session, someone might have said, “Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense.” That would have been a valuable tidbit of information.

Concrete words stress observable, external, objective reality. They focus the receiver’s attention on the thing or action being described, rather than on anyone’s personal reaction. Conversely, judgmental words showcase evaluation and emphasize personal reactions. They direct the receiver’s attention to the emotion rather than to a dispassionate portrayal of the event, often prompting a defensive reaction. For example, stating “You have missed the past three reporting deadlines” distinctly describes what the sender wants to convey. “Your missed deadlines haven’t shown consideration for the others on your team” puts the focus on the sender’s emotions, not the message.

Concrete language also helps you stick to the facts, avoiding inferences, another source of problems. By definition, statements of fact include only what we observe and cannot be made about the future. Inferences, on the other hand, go beyond what we see and can concern the past, the present, or the future. Facts have a high probability of accuracy; inferences represent only some modest degree of probability. Most importantly, facts bring people together; inferences, like judgment, create distance and cause disagreements.

Nonverbal communication also plays a role in strengthening or weakening organizational culture. Even less precise than the most exacting of verbal language, nonverbal communication is vague, unintended, continuous, and more highly prone to misinterpretation. Yet, research indicates that we trust it more than we do verbal communication. When a discrepancy between the words we say and the nonverbal message we display exists, the receiver will often trust the authenticity of nonverbal displays of feelings more than the verbal explanation of them.

For example, Dan, an extremely gifted and focused engineer in a highly technical Fortune 500 company, had trouble connecting with people and experienced high turnover in his department. I had spoken to Dan on the phone and was very impressed with his verbal ability and responsiveness, so I couldn’t imagine why he had retention issues. Then I met Dan in person and resolved all questions. Dan wore a constant frown and look of discontent. Even when he talked about something he enjoyed, the frown persisted.

Rather than telling Dan about my observations, I decided to show him. I asked him to prepare a two-minute role-play conversation that he might have with a direct report. We videotaped the interaction, with me playing his direct report. When I played it back, I turned down the volume and asked Dan to hear with his eyes. He watched himself scowl and glower for two full minutes. When I turned off the tape, I asked him to forget that he knew the nature of the discussion and to guess what the speaker had been doing. He said, “It looks like I’m trying to explain quantum physics to an oyster” (a little engineering humor). Dan had no idea that his nonverbal demeanor interfered with his effectiveness. In other words, his intentions had very little to do with the reality that he alienated people with his facial expressions and glares. Once he understood, he corrected the problem and retrained himself to look interested, not intimidating and scary.

In the workplace, we use communication to enhance performance, produce better outcomes, and foster strong relationships—all constructs of action-oriented, learning cultures. But it isn’t so easy. Flawed technique can quickly turn a meeting into a fruitless argument and set the tone for future discord.

Conclusion

So often I encounter an executive team that seems to have it all—the whole six-pack. But they lack the plastic thingy that holds it all together. Culture is that plastic thingy. Leaders who hope to create exceptional organizations realize they must act as culture managers—the people who help to create the environment where star performers can consistently and consciously challenge ordinary standards, protocols, and performance.

These leaders set the tone at the top, and lead the never-ending journey to discover new and better ways to solve problems and adapt to the world around them. When something works well over a period of time, and leaders consider it valid, these vanguards lead the charge to teach behaviors, values, and ideas to new people and to reinforce them with existing employees. Through this process, people find out what those around them perceive, think, and feel about issues that touch the organization.