Parks: Do You Have a Culture of Merit... or a Culture of Entitlement?
I talk to a lot of shop owners who work really hard on their organization and believe they have a good culture, but their results tell another story. Their effort levels vary, and many struggle with process implementation, profitability, morale, retention, and even recruitment. But what is culture? And what comes first, culture or process? I believe that culture is defined by what happens in my organization when I am not there and what a new employee experiences during his or her onboarding. Will new staff walk into a team that will pull them up, or a team that will stifle their passion and tell them to slow down? The second part is not so easy; process lends to culture, and culture creates buy-in to process. So, what comes first, and how do we create and sustain a winning culture? Let’s look at some of the biggest factors.
Reward the Culture Drivers
Who is on your team today? Who is a cheerleader and who is disgruntled? In a culture of merit, opportunity, advancement, or raises will always be given to the most qualified person who brings the most value to the organization. This person will never be passed over or managed by someone with less skill and qualification, regardless of time on the job or how good the relationship is with the boss. Conversely, in a culture of entitlement, great employees go silent. When opportunity is given based on personal feelings, nepotism, or tenure, morale and culture erode, and staff will either look for other opportunities to use their voice or will simply stop caring. Leadership needs to exhaustively and continually assess the team and reward the culture drivers. Remember: what gets celebrated gets repeated. Don’t be afraid to rock the boat; don’t be afraid to move your “anchors” to less key positions, or even out. The worst behavior we tolerate in our organization becomes the standard.
Are You Incentivizing the Wrong Things?
What is your retention ratio? If we are struggling with retention, we likely have a combination of damaged culture, ordinary or lesser perks, poor pay plans that don’t hit the mark, and/or poor communication in your vision and in your staff’s goals. Sometimes leadership does not realize we have incentivized the wrong things that don’t really even move the needle in our business. Too often, we take a cookie-cutter approach to managing our staff. In my organization, I don’t have many people who truly want the same thing for their lifestyle personal choices. We need to adopt a personalized approach to finding motivators for our most important asset, our people. Giving the team a voice in the development of the organization is clutch. Ask your team one on one what their personal goals are and listen with the intent to be influenced. The independents and smaller MSOs have an advantage here. We can quickly pivot to make what our staff cares about important, where the larger organizations are a little more clumsy, less agile, and critical messages take longer to resonate to the top.
Quality, Service, and Integrity are Required for Sustainability
What are we doing to be our staff’s career partner? What is our company ethos? Are we investing as much time and resources in staff development as we extend to our business? Most of our highly skilled staff — and especially with fresher incoming generations — want process, direction, and training. We need to stop checking the minimum requirement training boxes! What message are we sending to our team when we do not invest in training for all guilds? If our only goal is more cars and profitability, we can achieve this, but it is not sustainable without quality, service, and integrity. These employees appreciate a sense of pride in where they work — or they will when they finally find it.
Many of us (including myself) don’t always know where to start here. This fearless self-evaluation can be daunting. I can tell you that inaction is going to be our worst enemy. With some of the never-before-seen challenges we are already facing in our industry, it has never been more important to build a unified front line with our teams. A good place to start is exceptional personal and leadership training, ESI surveys to take a pulse with current staff, collaborative team interviews when considering new hires, working to find individual work love languages, SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound), and baby-step opportunities for continuous improvement. Be patient with yourself and your teams as you begin to grow together. There will inevitably be setbacks, but they are not permanent. Failure is a temporary state where the most valuable lessons are learned.
Simply put, happy people, clear processes, and great culture equal sustainable profitability.
