The One Most Critical Factor for a Truly Healthy Church Culture

by: VRcurator

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How can you protect and grow your church culture without having to be negative all the time?

Either you will manage your culture, or it will manage you.

Simply defined, culture is the way people think and act.

Every organization has a culture, which either works for you or against you – and it can make the difference between success and failure. Managing the organizational culture so that leaders, managers, and team members think and act in the manner necessary to achieve desired results has never mattered more.

When most organizations try to improve their culture, they focus on the negative aspects, and try to fix them. This sounds reasonable, but the opposite approach is much more successful. You may find greater success in identifying a few positive attributes within your culture that are connected directly to your identity and mission. Focus on them and find ways to accelerate and extend them throughout the organization.

Leaders model culture by consistent personal example.

THE QUICK SUMMARY –The Culture Engine, by S. Chris Edmonds

The Culture Engine shows leaders how to create a high performing, values aligned culture through the creation of an organizational constitution. With practical step-by-step guidance, readers learn how to define their organization’s culture, delineate the behaviors that contribute to greater performance and greater engagement, and draft a document that codifies those behaviors into a constitution that guides behavior towards an ideal: a safe, inspiring workplace. The discussion focuses on people, including who should be involved at the outset and how to engage employees from start to finish, while examples of effective constitutions provide guidance toward drafting a document that can actualize an organization’s potential.

Culture drives everything that happens in an organization day-to-day, including focus, priorities, and the treatment of employees and customers. A great culture drives great performance, and can help attract and retain great talent. But a great culture isn’t something that evolves naturally. The Culture Engine is a guide to strategically planning a culture by compiling the company’s guiding principles and behaviors into an organizational constitution.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

As is the case in almost every organizational component, culture begins at the top – with the leader’s personal culture.

Leaders shape the way people think and behave—leaders are viewed by others as role models, and employees look around to see if their behavior is consistent with the organization’s espoused values and philosophy.

Leaders set the agenda. Leaders influence the organization’s culture and in turn the long-term effectiveness of the organization. Leaders and managers set the context within which organizational members strive for excellence and work together to achieve organizational goals.

The credibility and success of any culture improvements at your organization will depend on the degree to which you, as the culture champion, are consistently modeling the desired values and behaviors.

Leaders are in charge of an organization’s culture. Refining or tweaking your team’s or organization’s current culture means that you will be the banner carrier for your organizational constitution.

Here’s what leaders must do:

1. You are ready to embrace the leader’s responsibility to be a proactive champion of your desired culture.
2. You’ll need to invest significant time and energy communicating, modeling, and reinforcing your desired culture.
3. You’ll need to embrace servant leadership in daily interactions.
4. You’ll need to promptly and genuinely praise and encourage aligned efforts by team members and teams.
5. You’ll not be able to simply add these activities to your daily workload; you’ll need to redirect time and energy to culture-champion activities from less important activities.

Chris Edmonds, The Culture Engine

A NEXT STEP

Take the following Culture Effectiveness Assessment (CEA) (from The Culture Engine, p42-43) in order to help you understand the degree to which you, as a team or organizational leader, have clarified your own purpose, values, behaviors, and leadership philosophy.

Your Culture Effectiveness Assessment, like weighing yourself everyday, only tells part of the story. Your scales may tell you you’re gaining weight, but not if you’re gaining muscle. You will need other testing to determine that.

Likewise, your CEA score is just a measurement. Once you have taken it, set it aside, and begin the personal work required to set the standard for improving cultural organization. Ask yourself these three questions:

1. What is one immediate action I can take this week to champion healthy culture? (Example: spend 15 minutes one morning prayer walking your buildings)
2. What is one collaborative moment I can create in the next month to demonstrate and celebrate aligned efforts among our team? (Example: creating a quarterly staff fellowship with awards)
3. What is one measurable target we can set for the next year that supports the culture we desire to sustain? (Example: every small group member serving in the community at least once)

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 58-3, January 2017.

This is part of a weekly series posting content from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders.

SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

>> Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: Organizational Culture, S. Chris Edmonds, The Culture Engine

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Why Changing Strategy Without Changing Culture Changes Nothing

by: Bill Donahue

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I see it almost everywhere I work with leadership teams. Let me tell you what it is and what you should be doing differently. And I will cite two great HBR articles that are helpful. (For more about HBR go here.)

Before I name the mistake, let me describe how it pops up.

You want to move ahead so you brainstorm a bit, read the latest books, review all the models, attend a conference or watch some videos. Then draft the new strategy, delegate responsibilities,  and launch the new plan.

And in six months you are…

• Spinning Your Wheels. Lots of vision and planning is done, and even some keenly designed initiatives, but you seem to be spinning your wheels and getting nowhere. Why?
• Driving on the Wrong Track. You get off to a fast start, launch an initiative, and soon leaders start moving, building teams and creating materials … but there is confusion. Why is this not working? You’re going somewhere — but where?
• Having a Multiple-Vehicle Accident. Your entrepreneurial team starts launching their own version of the vision, building and designing what works for them, running into one another as they fight for people, recognition, platform and resources. Soon there’s a 6-leader pileup.

These leaders had great strategies, good people and ample resources. But they kept failing. What needed to change?

Culture.

When you change your strategy without changing your culture, you change NOTHING! Change is resisted at every bend. Here are ten reasons why.

So why amplify this reality by putting new wine in old wine skins? Or, to stick with our racing metaphor, we strap a formula-one engine to a NASCAR chassis.  It makes a lot of noise and covers a lot of ground – but nothing really changes.

• A university creates online programming to make more content available – but they don’t change delivery methods, relying on a teacher-centered model instead of a learner-centered approach.
• A church wants a new outreach strategy and launches new “missional communities,” but the congregation does not have a missional mindset, and they really don’t understand the people they are trying to reach.
• A business hires phone “consultants” for that “personal touch” to improve customer service. But actually what the customer wants is speedy ordering, distinctive choices and an easy internet-based return policy – they do not need a nice phone conversation.

In the popular Lean Start-Up Movement, entrepreneurs re-think the way we launch a venture (or ministry or educational center, etc.). Listen to Steve Blank on Lean Start-ups:

…it favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional “big design up front” development. Although the methodology is just a few years old, its concepts—such as “minimum viable product” and “pivoting”—have quickly taken root in the start-up world, and business schools have already begun adapting their curricula to teach them.

This approach is working because it forces you to actually understand the culture you are trying to reach, and the culture you are creating in your own camp.

It is not enough to change a strategy or talk about innovation. Cultures must change. I spend lots of time helping teams and leaders make progress here. Here are some questions that drive that process.

• What defines us now – who are we really?
• Where do we want to go and why?
• What exits in the new culture we want to create that is absent now?
• What kind of leaders do we need to become to make this transition?
• What environments, tools and processes need to be created (or removed) in order to move toward the future?
• Do we have/can we get the right people?
• What actual steps are required and who is responsible for each one?
• How do we know we are making progress?
• How hard are we willing to work to change our culture?

Leaders are in the culture-making business. Before you take the “big splash” approach again, you might evaluate the culture…inside and out. That means changing how you view potential leaders, the systems you design, the people you recruit or hire, the process (not just the end result) of how you develop strategy, and whether you become learners rather than teachers.

So what’s in your culture?

What will it take for a cultural makeover?

What are your biggest challenges in culture shaping and culture changing?

>> Read more from Bill here.

Tags: Bill Donahue, Change, Culture, Leadership Engine, Organizational Culture

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3 Driving Factors in Creating Culture in Your Church

by: Dan Reiland

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Chick-fil-A is a favorite fast food restaurant chain in the Southeast. When you get something to eat there you are likely to hear a cheerful “My Pleasure” from any employee. It’s part of their culture.

I recently visited Christ Fellowship Church in West Palm Beach. Todd Mullins is the senior pastor and Tom Mullins is the founding pastor. I love that church. The spirit there is amazing. It’s a huge mega-church and yet they make you feel special. Each person is treated like a million bucks! The spirit of hospitality and serving is palpable.

In contrast, I’ve also traveled and consulted with churches that had no need for parking lot attendants because there was plenty of room. The ushers were grumpy and the people glared. (really) The staff members were unhappy and gossiped. The senior pastor was discouraged and the morale was dismal. The culture was toxic and the church was in serious decline. This is extreme, but more common than you might imagine.

You can’t tell people the culture of your church. They experience it. For good or bad, your culture is in full play. It is possible to change it, but requires a long road of deliberate and intentional leadership. You can’t print the six points of your culture in the bulletin and think that will change anything.

Some church staffs have gone on retreat to figure out what they want their culture to be. That’s good, but again, you can’t come back and announce it. The leaders need to live it out.

Candidly, it’s very difficult to repair a negative culture. Rather, you replace it with a positive culture. In other words, you are on defense if you attempt to repair what is broken. It’s like putting your fingers in the dyke to stop the flooding. The problem is that there are one hundred holes and you have only ten fingers! You can’t keep up. Instead, you want to get out in front.

Make the changes you need to make. If you need to make a change in staff, be courageous and make the change. If you need to make a shift in your ministries, then do it. If you need to seek forgiveness or return to teaching the gospel, serving the poor; whatever it may be, just do it.

Don’t jump into this process with fear or in panic. Think clearly and pray much. This is a long, slow and deliberate road. If a healthy culture represents a healthy personality, then what is your healthy personality? Live that out authentically. You won’t need to hype anything up, or try to sell it; it will come naturally if you live it out intentionally.

It takes continual effort. Your culture is never set. As your church grows and new people become part of your church, the culture will drift. In very large churches, the same thing happens in the staff. When the culture drifts it’s not the people’s fault and it’s not the staff’s fault. It’s the responsibility of the senior pastor, key staff and board.

At 12Stone® Church where I serve as executive pastor, we have grown rapidly and experienced a slight culture drift amongst the staff. This is not the staff’s fault. It’s my responsibility. If I’ve not communicated something or modeled something, or corrected something, how can the staff be responsible? The good news is that our team is so positive, hard-working and passionate for the vision that slight culture corrections are not a big deal. If you wait, or miss it altogether, that’s quite another story.

Dr. Sam Chand has written an excellent book titled CRACKING YOUR CHURCH’S CULTURE CODE: Seven Keys to Unleashing Vision & Inspiration. It’s a great book, and I highly recommend it. Sam doesn’t tell you what your culture should be, but helps guide you to experiencing the culture you want. He offers these helpful questions:

• Who actually controls what gets done and what doesn’t?
• Does everyone understand the why behind the what?
• How is leadership discovered, developed and deployed?
• How are changes made?
• Is failure allowed?
• Are risks taken?
• Are the leaders courageous?
• Does the team think systematically?
• Who are your heroes?
• How much does the average staff member feel he or she has input into the direction and strategy of the church?
• Is there a spirit of hospitality and servant leadership?
• Who is rewarded, and for what accomplishments?
• What are the sacred cows?

The senior pastor is a major driving force in setting the culture. It’s not an autocratic thing; it’s a normal part of life and leadership. In fact, I believe this is one reason why churches that experience frequent senior pastor turnover struggle more with culture issues than churches that have a more tenured pastor. A tenured senior pastor is certainly not a guarantee to a healthy and thriving culture, but it’s one significant factor.

In essence, there are three driving factors that create culture.

1. What you do. 

No one church can do everything. Therefore what you do is an important expression of who you are. The prayerful selection of what ministries you do and don’t do is a major factor in setting the culture of your church. What you do (and don’t do) from global missions to local compassion and justice endeavors, to how you embrace first time guests to developing leaders all plays a significant role in shaping your culture. It’s true that culture is greatly impacted by things of style and preference like if your church is more casual or formal, and your style of worship, but what you actually do has a far greater impact.

2. How you do it.

Churches do ministry differently. That’s a given. We learn from each other, and some things are replicated, but there is an element of interpretation and factors such as leadership style, theology, priorities, finances, church history, size of church etc. that naturally cause the leaders to practice ministry a little differently from church to church. This has a huge impact on your culture.

3. What you care about. 

Let me be candid, as a leader you can’t care about everything! None of us like to admit that but it’s true. We don’t like the way that sounds because it suggests that there are some things we actually don’t care about. That’s not the heart of what I’m saying. The point is to be honest about the practical realities of leadership – and that connects back to point number one.

Here are a few questions that will help you land this point. 

• What has God put on your heart?
• What are the burdens for people you carry?
• What keeps you awake at night because you feel something must be done?
• What ministries are thriving and you are passionate about their future success?
• What ministries are struggling that for you are non-negotiable and must improve?

If you follow this “5 Step” process, your culture is likely to flourish.

1. Know your culture.
2. Model your culture.
3. Communicate your culture.
4. Correct drift in your culture.
5. Celebrate your culture.

At 12Stone our culture is felt, seen and quickly experienced. It is made up of three DNA strands and they are Spiritual Intensity, Creative Ideation, and Leadership Development. That’s not our purpose or mission, it’s our culture. That truly is who we are, and we invest much to keep that culture healthy and flourishing so that we can lift up the name of Jesus and see lives changed!

“This article is used by permission from Dr. Dan Reiland’s free monthly e-newsletter, “The Pastor’s Coach,” available at www.INJOY.com.”

Tags: 12Stone Church, Creating Culture, Dan Reiland, Organizational Culture

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Understanding How Culture Drives Your Ministry

by: Tim Kastelle

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In organizations, it is the culture that provides the beat.  This means that the same idea will perform differently in different organizations, even if nearly everything around it appears to be the same.

In an excellent post on culture, Dave Snowden  says:

Culture arises from actions in the world, ways of doing things which may never be articulated, and which may not be capable of articulation.  In effect culture is always complex, never complicated.  So it follows that cultural change is an evolutionary process from the present, not an idealised future state design.

So the most singularly stupid meaningless thing you can ever do is to define what culture you want.  At best it’s a set of platitudes, at worst its a set of pious platitudes that trigger negative and hostile accusations of hypocrisy from your employees and customers alike.  Culture is an emergent property of interactions over time so the first and most important thing is to map your culture.

Snowden has a good system for mapping cultures, and great recommendations for trying to shift them.  When we think about the culture that supports innovation, his three recommendations will also work.  They are:

• Focus on actions. Snowden argues that actions tell us a lot more about your organization’s culture than rhetoric.  This is true.  If we are trying to build innovation, this means that being able to experiment is much more important than including innovation in your list of corporate values.  The best way to build an innovation culture is to innovate, not to talk about it.  Do this by building the capability to test ideas quickly and cheaply, and in such a way that you learn from the outcomes.
• Manage through constraints. Constraints are the things that determine current actions.  They also drive creativity.
• Manage interactions and connections. In complex systems, emergent properties arise through networks of interactions.  Building an understanding of your networks is crucial to improving innovation outcomes.  Network weaving is a more effective management tool than organizational restructuring.

A common mistake that I see from organizations is taking an idea from somewhere else and trying to just bolt it on to an incompatible culture.  Google’s 20% is a great idea, but it will only work if your people are empowered to make their own decisions, their regular work is rewarding, and you have the resources and desire to implement the ideas that they develop.

If your culture doesn’t include these qualities, then 20% will end up looking more like it does in this post by Shanley:

20% of the time, or all of the time, people can work on whatever they want to

What your culture might actually be saying is… We have enough venture funding to pay people to work on non-core parts of the business. We are not under that much pressure to make money. The normal work of the business is not sufficiently rewarding so we bribe employees with pet projects. We’re not entirely sure what our business objectives and vision are, so we are trying to discover it by letting employee passions take root.

The difference between that picture of 20% time and Google’s is culture.

Culture drives your ministry.

Read more from Tim here.

Tags: Innovation, Leadership Engine, Organizational Culture, Tim Kastelle

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10 Elements of a Great Company Culture

by: Paul Spiegelman

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Building a company culture of engaged employees takes years and requires consistent execution.  I boiled down our culture strategy into 10 essential components I call the “10 Cs of Culture.”

1. Core Values

I used to be very cynical about “core values.”  I thought these were just mottos written on plaques hanging on the wall.  But when we implemented our values strategy at Beryl about 10 years ago, I began to see how they guided everyday decision-making and how employees referenced them in meetings.  I came to realize they are essential guideposts when developed, communicated, and executed in a consistent manner.  Values are those behaviors that will never change no matter how the company changes.  Today, our values are not only painted on the walls, but also discussed from the first day an employee joins Beryl.  We start every big meeting with a conversation about values and tell stories about how our coworkers live by those values on a daily basis.

2. Camaraderie

Camaraderie is about having fun.  It’s about getting to know colleagues not just as colleagues, but what they’re like outside the office.  To do that, Beryl hosts dress-up days, parties, games, and events all the time.  We have annual traditions like family day, the Gong show, March Madness, the fall festival, and a holiday party.  We include not only employees, but also their families.  We publish a bi-monthly full-color magazine called Beryl Life that is sent to the homes of co-workers.  Kids of our employees compete to design the t-shirt for our annual family day and families even participate in our talent show

3. Celebrations

You can’t underestimate the importance of recognizing your team.  While it may be important for your people to hear from the CEO, it also feels great for them to hear from peers.  At Beryl, we developed a program we call PRIDE (Peers Recognizing Individual Deeds of Excellence).  This allows coworkers to recognize others for living up to Beryl’s core values.  We also have quarterly contests for people who have received PRIDE certificates.  We go out of our way to celebrate personal successes too, like baby showers, sports accomplishments, or educational milestones.

4. Community

Part of the fabric of a successful company culture is connecting with and giving back to the local community.  Even though Beryl is a national company serving national customers, we have dedicated countless hours to community service in Bedford, Texas (where Beryl is based) to help those in need.  This not only helps the organization’s Beryl support, but brings great pride to staffers.

5. Communication

At Beryl, I encourage formal and informal communication consistently and at all levels of the company.  I hold quarterly Town Hall meetings, which includes six meetings over two days.  This is a challenge since Beryl is a 24-hour call center; we make money being on the phone, not off it.  Yet I also have informal “chat and chews” where I bring in lunch for 12 to 15 people and just ask one question–How’s it going?–to get the conversation started.  I send a monthly personal letter to the staff with pictures of my family, and set up an internal website called “Ask Paul” for anyone that has a question not easy to share in a group.

6. Caring

Show your employees you genuinely care about them in the totality of their lives.  To do this at Beryl, we set up a program called BerylCares.  Any manager can explain a situation on an internal website that identifies a coworker, and lists what’s going on (birth, death, injury, wedding, among other things).  That submission generates an email to me that is my trigger to send a personal notecard, make a phone call, or visit someone in a hospital.  We also provide behind-the-scenes financial help to people who need extra assistance.

7. Commitment to Learning

8. Consistency

Culture is based on traditions.  When you come up with great programs or events, make them regular events and do them consistently. One-time efforts to improve the culture will feel disingenuous.  This can take years, but makes a profound difference, that pays off when employees enjoy where they work and genuinely like their colleagues.

9. Connect

Don’t isolate yourself at the top.  Connect with people at all levels of your company.  Get out of your comfort zone.  At Beryl, I’ve starred in funny videos that put me in uncompromising or embarrassing positions.  If the staff plans a dress-up day or ping-pong tournament, I participate.  I laugh and cry with employees, too.

10. Chronicles

Does everyone in your organization know how the company started?  Do they know the personal stories of the founders and what led them to build a sustainable business?  People want to know they are part of something special and unique.  Greet new employees by telling the history of the company, and impart stories that led to current culture and strategies.

Read more from Paul here.

Tags: Folklore, Organizational Culture, Paul Spiegelman

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