You’ve got a “great culture”. Every day is exciting and fun.
People can try new things, make mistakes and learn. Employees run their own radio station in the office and keep everyone entertained.
Congratulations! You’re the worst funeral director ever!
Cultivating culture is not about introducing fun, novelty and entertainment.
Culture is how we do things around here. It’s the rules that aren’t written in the employee handbook that inform behaviours, approaches and practises towards a purposeful goal.
Purposeful goal is the key phrase here.
If we don’t know what we’re trying to achieve, what our mission and vision (and, hopefully, purpose) are, then we’re just introducing things that we think make it a great place to work.
But culture is not about creating a great place to work. It’s about creating a place where great work is done.
This means aligning those behaviours, approaches and practises purposefully so that our overall goals are achieved.
Having a fail-often-learn-fast innovative culture might suit a tech start-up, but it would be disastrous in the Armed Forces.
We must nurture and cultivate the culture that supports our strategy.
Hopefully, that is also fun.
But fun should never be the driving purpose in cultural change or employee engagement
It’s a nuanced difference.
But it’s the difference between having a fun place to work and having fun working towards a purpose.
