Seeds of Culture: Improve Organizational Performance by Growing a Culture of Commitment

By Dan Bredeson

Culture is grown, not built
​Why do so many organizations get culture so wrong?
Because too many leaders think like a carpenter instead of a farmer. Culture is often referred to in construction terms, such as "Let's build our culture," or "We need to lay a solid foundation for culture." Culture doesn't work that way. It’s an organic process. Culture is grown, not built.
In Seeds of Culture, author Dan Bredeson discusses
•how an organization’s culture affects performance,
•the six traits of successful “culture farmers” (i.e., leaders),
•the seven “seeds” that will grow into a culture of commitment,
•and how leaders should cultivate those seeds throughout their life cycle.
Many organizations have a culture which seeks compliance instead of commitment. Performance improves when members of the organization go the extra mile because they want to, not because they have to. Seeds of Culture outlines how to improve performance by growing a culture of commitment. This leads to a sense of community and an environment in which team members  show up, work hard, and care about each other and the organization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
• Release date: Oct 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886451016

Book preview

PREFACE

I’VE BEEN PASSIONATE ABOUT organizational culture (hereafter culture) for more than twenty years. I’ve observed it. I’ve learned from it. I’m fascinated by it. Maybe I’m obsessed with it. After all, culture has had a profound impact on my life. Culture is the reason I met my wife. More on that later.

How did my obsession with culture emerge? What occupation did I pursue that provided me with knowledge and insight into culture? I must be a management consultant for a Big Four firm, right? I wish, but no. Do I have a PhD in industrial and organizational psychology? No, and no thank you. Nothing against that course of study, but I got my fill of research and academic writing while completing my master’s degree. So how on earth did I gain two decades of experience dealing with culture?

I sold insurance.

Just like every person who has ever sold insurance, I didn’t grow up with dreams of selling insurance. I wanted to pitch for the Milwaukee Brewers. Unfortunately, my fastball couldn’t get a speeding ticket in a school zone, so I had to set childhood dreams aside. After high school, I went to college and studied hard. Hold on, hold on . . . I couldn’t type that last sentence without laughing out loud. Let me try again. I went to college, and I graduated. That’s better. I eventually got my educational act together, twenty years later, and completed graduate school. But at twenty-two years old, I entered the workforce with zero marketable skills and a less than stellar academic record.

That’s how I found myself sitting in a lobby, wearing an ill-fitting suit, waiting to be interviewed by the regional manager of an insurance company. All these years later, I distinctly remember that day.

The office building was nothing special, and it was in a part of town that was merely okay. The lobby area was small but well lit. A lot of earth tones and stain-resistant carpet. Not brass and glass like you normally saw in fancy offices of that era. What the office lacked in aesthetics, it made up for with attitude. The mediocre furnishings belied an infectious vibe that permeated the walls.

As I waited, I watched nicely dressed people scurrying back and forth. The office manager quickly distributed the mail and retrieved voicemails left on the office’s landline phone number. Yes, that’s a thing that used to happen. I saw a small team of people huddled up in a private office to talk about . . . something. I was curious to find out what it was. Two other people walked past me, one of them holding a map. That’s another thing that used to happen. They were talking about where they were going to get after it today. The place was buzzing. Everyone seemed busy, focused, and happy.

By the time I was called in for my interview, I was hooked. I didn’t even know what the job was, but I wanted in. I didn’t take the job because I wanted to sell insurance. I took the job because I wanted to be a part of that culture.

I didn’t think of it as culture back then. I just knew I wanted to be a part of . . . whatever it was they were doing. My attraction to the positive culture I felt on that day started a twenty-year career in sales and leadership.

The company I represented sold insurance products and related services to businesses large and small. The first step in the sales process was also the most difficult. It required scheduling a meeting with the final decision-maker (DM) in a company so I could pitch our products and services. I spent a lot of time waiting in corporate lobbies and conference rooms before meeting with a DM. Quite often, the company’s mission statement was prominently displayed. On rare occasions, the DM would refer to the mission statement during our conversation. At other times, they would mention the type of culture they believed was present in the company.

If the DM liked what I had to say, my next meeting was with the human resources (HR) staff or directly with frontline supervisors. Meeting with HR/supervisors was the second step in the sales process, and it was my first opportunity to see if the company’s mission statement and the DM’s vision of company culture were being communicated to middle management. I noticed a fairly strong correlation. If the DM discussed company culture with me, middle management normally did as well. If the DM never discussed culture with me, neither did middle management.

The final step in the sales process involved sitting down with every employee in the company to explain the insurance I was offering and enroll employees who were interested. These conversations were one-on-one because I had to ask the type of personal questions you would expect to see on an insurance application: age, height, weight, income, health history, etc. Basically, every topic you’re not supposed to discuss at a cocktail party, except for politics, but that usually came up anyway.

Take a guess about which topic of conversation came up most frequently. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that it was the company’s culture. Most employees didn’t use the word culture to describe how the company operated and the way it made them feel, but that’s exactly what they meant. Even if the DM and middle management didn’t discuss culture, the employees certainly did. Oh, the things employees would say about their employer when given the opportunity. Mostly PG-rated stuff, with the occasional sprinkle of R-rated language.

It’s amazing how people will open up when they’re speaking to an unbiased third party. The feedback I received wasn’t all bad. Far from it. A few people hated their job. Some people loved their job. Most employees I talked to would say, It pays the bills. I don’t love it or hate it. It’s fine. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Maybe it was the personal nature of the questions I asked. Maybe it was the one-on-one setting. Maybe I’m just a good listener (my wife would disagree). Whatever the reason, people felt comfortable enough to get real about their opinion of the organization’s culture. I was there to talk about insurance. They were there, seemingly, to talk about the company. Was I the first person associated with their employer who listened to what they had to say?

They would tell me if they loved or hated their work, and why. They would tell me if they liked or disliked their boss, and why. They would tell me if they were looking for another job, and why. I took note of all the whys. Understanding those whys was a tremendous help when it was my turn to lead an organization.

Eventually, I was promoted to lead a small sales team. Success at that level led to another promotion and a bigger team. After a few ups and downs, I found myself in the role of regional manager. Now it was my turn to recruit, hire, and train a team of salespeople. I wanted to aggressively grow the team, so I interviewed a minimum of fifteen people per week during my tenure in that position.

My next promotion put me in a position to train and mentor regional managers. Part of the job was training them how to interview candidates. After six years as a regional manager and nearly ten years training regional managers, I estimate that I interviewed more than seven thousand people. I learned a lot about what motivates a person to stay with a company or leave it by scanning a resume and asking, Out of all the jobs listed on your resume, what was your favorite, and why? You’ve probably surmised by now that culture was the why cited most frequently.

Hundreds of conversations with DMs in different companies. Thousands of conversations with the employees of those companies. Thousands of conversations with candidates during job interviews. I took note of the reasons why people stayed with a company or chose to leave. I learned what motivated people to be committed to the work they were doing instead of just showing up for a paycheck. I noticed the cultural differences between the companies that succeeded and those that failed.

The accumulated knowledge of those thousands of interactions has been poured into this book and the work I do every day. I’m grateful for the experience those interactions afforded me, but I wish I had learned some of the lessons of culture sooner. I’ve made a mountain of mistakes in my career, and I wish I could undo my most egregious errors with culture. Unfortunately, life doesn’t give us do-overs, so I decided to write the book I wish I could have read when I was first given the opportunity to influence an organization’s culture.

Whether you lead an organization or not, I think you’ll find a few grains of truth in Seeds of Culture. I hope they help you achieve outstanding results and experience the joy that comes from working with like-minded individuals in a culture of commitment.

When I was a kid on the farm, my dad would often remind me, Work comes first, then play. Before we can have fun working in a high-performance organization, we have some work to do. So, let’s roll up our sleeves and get after it!

INTRODUCTION

STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE . . .

The story of a failing organization follows a pretty standard script. It doesn’t matter if the organization is a sports team, small business, Fortune 500 company, or local nonprofit organization. As soon as the powers that be (PTB) in that organization determine that performance is not meeting expectations (however those expectations are measured), a new leader is brought in. The new leader comes in and makes grandiose promises including, but not limited to, fixing the culture of the organization. But what is culture? Chapter 1 is devoted to answering that question.

For now, let’s imagine it’s your first day on the job with a new employer, and I’m your supervisor. You just went through a new hire orientation that introduced you to the products we sell and the processes that help us do it. Now you’re going to shadow me for the rest of the day and learn how we do everything else around here. And I mean everything. You’re going to observe how employees speak to one another. How they speak to customers. How employees dress. How the company celebrates. How the company disciplines. How leaders treat their direct reports. How the company handles conflict. All of that and much more.

That’s a busy first day. And by the end of it, you probably don’t remember a single thing that was covered during the new hire orientation. You can barely remember the products we sell. After one day on the job, you may be a little fuzzy on what we do around here (products and processes), but I bet you have a clear understanding of how we do things around here (everything else from the previous paragraph). If that’s the case, congratulations! You just took a giant step toward understanding the culture of the organization.

When an organization fails, the cultural fixes proposed by the new leader are usually nothing more than doing the exact opposite of whatever the previous leader did. I call it the George Costanza Strategy for Organizational Change.¹ The previous leader was an autocrat, so the new leader encourages autonomy. Did the old leader have a laissez-faire attitude? Okay, here’s a healthy dose of accountability.

It’s not a sophisticated strategy, but it can be effective in the short term. Especially during the honeymoon phase every new leader is granted when they first join an organization. Sometimes the new leader gets lucky and doing the opposite of the previous leader is exactly what the team needs. Turns out they just needed a bit of accountability after all. Hey, it worked for George Costanza.

However, most new leaders aren’t that lucky. After the initial excitement wears off and the new leader is just the leader, the culture that had been lying dormant during the honeymoon phase comes out of hibernation and begins to drive performance back down.

The leader can’t figure out what happened. The PTB are beside themselves. The members of the organization are just . . . well . . . they’re just doing what they’ve always done. As far as they’re concerned, the new boss is just the same as the old boss. It’s the culture that drives their performance, and nobody bothered to address it properly. The PTB push reset. Another change in leadership. This new leader promises to transform the culture. It won’t work.

How can I be so sure? The source of my confidence is more than twenty years of experience dealing with hundreds of organizations varying in size and industry. The sales process I followed to acquire and serve clients began with the C-suite, continued through middle management, and ended with frontline employees. And that process was repeated every year. I was selling insurance products and related services, so every year I had to sit down with every level of the organization to discuss any changes to the plan.

I had several clients who were with me for more than a decade. You learn a lot about the inner workings of an organization if you talk to every team member, every year, for ten or fifteen years. I saw employees come and go. I saw leaders come and go. I saw new mission statements painted on the walls—only to be painted over a few years later. I listened to countless new leaders tell me how they were going to turn the company around by building, changing, or transforming the culture. Then a few years later another new leader would tell me the same thing.

After watching the same old story of failed cultural transformations play out over and over and over again, I couldn’t help but think, If culture is so important, why do so many organizations get it wrong? I felt compelled to look for an answer, and when I found it, I felt equally compelled to write the book you hold in your hands. I’ve seen too many lousy, negative, toxic cultures fail to be changed by a leader who tries to build, transform, or create a better one. I thought, There has to be a different way to influence the culture of an organization. As it turns out, there is—and my experience with hundreds of different companies and thousands of different employees provided part of the solution.

So far, I’ve only mentioned my clients who were losing, culturally speaking. In full disclosure, those organizations didn’t represent a majority of my client base, but the percentage was high enough to get my attention. Most companies weren’t really winning or losing. They kept the doors open and the lights on, but you weren’t going to see them on the cover of Fortune magazine anytime soon.

On the other hand, a few of my clients were consistently winning at a high level. Winning in both culture and performance. I started paying close attention to the leaders of those organizations. The leaders who were winning didn’t talk like the leaders who were losing. Sorry to be so binary by referring to it as winning and losing, but that’s the best way to describe it. I wouldn’t call it winning if your organization keeps cycling through new leaders every few years.

Unsuccessful leaders talked about fixing, building, and transforming the culture. And they promised to do it quickly. Successful leaders used terms like growth and development. One leader described her mentorship program as nurturing the next generation of leaders. The winners weren’t forcing culture into the organization. They leveraged influence and worked hard to maintain their influence. The cultural winners were humble, hardworking, and patient—man oh man, were they patient.

When I began reflecting on why so many organizations get culture wrong and what could be done about it, mental images of leaders I had worked with started running through my mind. And then one day it dawned on me. Almost all of the leaders who were winning with culture reminded me of someone: my dad.

No, the cultural winners didn’t look like midwestern dairy farmers. They reminded me of my dad because they seemed to approach the culture of their organization in the same way my dad approached an empty field. My dad didn’t build the corn that would eventually fill his field. He grew the corn from seeds that he planted and properly cared for.

That’s the same thing the winning leaders were doing. They weren’t building culture—they were growing it! I realized that culture is an organic process. And much like my dad planted seeds of corn, leaders need to plant seeds of culture.

They need to be the right type of seeds. Dad didn’t plant soybeans and expect corn to grow. The seeds need to be properly cared for. This book describes which seeds you should plant to grow a culture of commitment, and how you can properly nurture the growth of those seeds throughout their life cycle. A culture of commitment inspires a sense of community among members of the organization. Before you know it, outstanding performance is a foregone conclusion.

My professional experience provided part of the solution to the problem of influencing culture in a different and more effective way. Reflecting on my upbringing on a small dairy farm in southwest Wisconsin provided me with the aha moment that was the spark to write this book. My educational experience fills in the gaps and connects the two. It provides all the technical stuff you’ll see in the endnotes.

Now that you know how I came up with what’s written on the title page, here’s what you’ll find in the rest of the book:

Chapter 1 describes how I came up with our definition of culture, which seems like a good idea considering the book has barely started and I’ve already used the word culture, or some variation of it, almost one hundred times.

With the Great Resignation as a starting point, we take a look at the impact of culture on organizational performance in Chapter 2. Spoiler alert: culture matters.

Chapter 3 expands on the culture-performance relationship by suggesting a type of culture that is best suited to improve organizational performance, and I introduce a model to describe how culture does it.

In Chapter 4 you learn why I use all the farming analogies to describe culture.

Chapters 5–10 discuss the mindset and traits of successful culture farmers (i.e., leaders). There’s been spirited debate within academic circles regarding the chicken or the egg of leadership and culture.² Does the leader change the culture, or does the culture change the leader? The pragmatic answer is that leadership and culture have the capacity to change each other, but the scale of causality is tipped slightly in favor of leadership as the primary driver of culture.³ You’ll see me use leader and culture farmer interchangeably throughout the book. I believe that every member of an organization has the ability, or should I say responsibility, to assist with the growth of culture. Sure, people in leadership positions should do most of the cultural heavy lifting, but you don’t have to be in a formal leadership role to be a culture farmer. Even if your boss sucks at culture, you can still make life better for you and your coworkers by planting seeds of culture.

Farmers don’t plant seeds before the weather and soil are ready. Chapter 11 reminds culture farmers that organizations are influenced by an internal and external environment. Both should be considered before planting seeds of culture.

Which brings us to Chapters 12–18: the seeds of culture. Wow, did it really take me eleven chapters to get to the ideas that inspired the title of the book? Well, I’m confident it’s worth the wait.

A farmer doesn’t plant seeds in the ground and then ignore them. Chapter 19 describes how culture farmers cultivate performance by encouraging the growth of culture.

Chapter 20 is when I pull it all together, wrap it up, and tie a bow on it. At least that’s what I’m shooting for. I’ve found that writing a coherent conclusion is probably the hardest part of this process, but even a speeding train eventually comes to a stop. The twentieth chapter seems like a good place to do that.

If this book turns out to be your Farmers’ Almanac for culture, then I’ve exceeded my own expectations. Each chapter concludes with a harvest that gathers up the ideas presented and asks all you aspiring culture farmers to consider how you’ll plant the ideas in your organization. Before we jump in, let me address one question that might be on your mind:

DOES CULTURE MATTER IN A REMOTE WORK ENVIRONMENT?

Yes. It absolutely does. I would argue that culture—true, genuine, long-lasting culture—matters as much in a remote work environment as it does when everyone is together in one place. It probably matters more, for reasons we discuss in Chapter 2. Work didn’t stop just because millions of employees went remote. Organizations still do all the things they did when everyone was in the office: hire, fire, onboard, communicate, train, perform, recognize, celebrate, etc.

How your organization handles the work that needs to be done will determine your culture. If you get culture wrong, remote employees are left to their own devices to sit at home and stew about how badly you screwed up. They do that for a little while, right before they start looking for