Add to the momentum
Once you have set your new culture in motion, you need to develop ways to perpetuate it. That means switching from a building mindset to a maintenance mindset. In a maintenance mindset, you test the cultural foundation of your company to see if it still fits your direction. You take steps to prevent the vision and culture from becoming stale. You ensure that your employees stay engaged and interested in the direction of the company.
Sometimes that takes tweaking the mission statement or core values, adding or changing a word here and there.
“This isn’t static; it needs to change and evolve,” Paquin says. “We recently added the term ‘innovation’ to our quest, because we felt long-ter
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growth would require us to do more than just what we’re doing today. If you put the change in writing, it allows you to stand up in front of your employees and show them the course adjustment, that your mission has evolved.
“Part of the maintenance of the culture is staying ahead of the curve, not letting the vision or the culture get stale. Even if it doesn’t need changing, I’d change it anyway so that you have the opportunity to stand up and use whatever form of communication is available to you and talk about it with your people. If your culture stays static and you just keep repeating the same message, there is some value to that, but it becomes dull, and people don’t stay engaged, they don’t become excited about it.”
Paquin says electronic media is a great way to reinforce the culture and keep it fresh in your employees’ minds — particularly if you operate a business that relies on an intranet site.
Many jobs at ModSpace are organized to include their intranet site. Employees frequently have to visit the site as part of their daily tasks, which gives Paquin and his leadership team something of a captive audience when it comes to promoting the culture.
“For example, our asset management department keeps their database on the intranet site,” Paquin says. “We populate the site with what I’ll call propaganda, but it’s really just whatever message we need to share. We always have the word ‘quality’ on the front page of the site, knowing that employees aren’t necessarily going there to see how we’re doing with our quality program, but as they’re passing through our intranet site to get to the information they need, they’re going to see it.”
In addition, Paquin ties his company’s performance review, reward and incentive programs to the culture. Employees are reviewed, in part, based on their ability to help ModSpace achieve its goals and promote its culture.
When an award is handed out by management, Paquin and his team always announce what the recipient accomplished to receive the award and how it ties into ModSpace’s cultural principles.
“We have something called the ‘Bravo Awards,’ and we’ll typically tie them back to a value,” Paquin says. “If someone went in and stole a key customer from a competitor, that’s exhibiting no fear, which is one of our values. ‘Bravo, here is $500; go do it again.’ So you need to celebrate those small victories, and tie them back to your goals. We want to tie it all back to what makes ModSpace be ModSpace.”
Paquin ties bonuses at all levels of the company back to the values and culture. That includes upper management, all the way up to Paquin himself.
“We want to keep focusing on quality in our business, so 10 percent of my bonus is tied to that quality factor,” he says. “That goes all the way down to our sales reps. They have the same performance element to their compensation.
“The point is, it’s not a single thing that is going to drive your culture. You need to establish the objective, and then in every way you touch your employees, whether it’s through compensation, your Web site, meetings, informal communications, you need to tie it all back to the culture. That’s what we’ve been doing obsessively for the past two and a half years.”
How to reach: ModSpace, (800) 523-7918 or www.modspace.com