Purpose In Propelling Company Culture

Company culture is the result of the dynamic interaction between an organisation and its members. Like a hive mind, this emergent property is something that can be shaped and shifted through individual and organisational practices - the leveraging of incentives and motivators that strengthen satisfaction, culture and success. Defined as a shared set of values, goals, attitudes, and practices that characterise an organisation, this shared ethos is the soil from which all potential grows.

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The recent pandemic has of course left many companies struggling to define, develop and nurture their culture - after all, what is it when you don’t see the other members of your community?  One invaluable lever in building and maintaining company culture, without the benefit of a fixed physical space, is purpose - the mission that drives and unifies everything that a business does.  As Simon Sinek argues in his book ‘Start with Why’, by successfully articulating and communicating purpose (and in turn passion) companies naturally inspire and motivate employees, colleagues and customers.  It becomes a lynchpin which unites otherwise disparate individuals, magnifying the thing that they all have in common,

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At x+why we support businesses, movements and leaders who are committed to thier purpose, and their ‘why’.  Here are a few examples of how our members (start-ups, freelancers, and established enterprises) engage with the process of uncovering and strengthening their authentic internal and external values and drivers, for a more purposeful approach to work.

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1. Motivators and Hygiene Factors

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Firstly, a distinction should be made between motivators and hygiene factors. Whereas hygiene factors refer to conditions such as pay, company policies, physical work conditions and job security; motivation can be defined as the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort towards attaining a goal.

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Hygiene factors are in alignment with the lower rungs of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which hypothesises that physiological and safety-security needs are of primary importance - from an employee perspective this includes more basic lifestyle and essential survival elements such as being able to afford the rent, sustenance, and not worrying about childcare for example.

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When these basic human elements are adequate, Herzberg’s Motivation Theory argues that these Hygiene Factors serve to create the absence of dissatisfaction, as opposed to actively developing satisfaction. In this sense, satisfaction or motivation may be considered a process, and companies may facilitate or hinder this process through the policies they instigate and the environments that they foster.

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Therefore while functional relationships with peers may be considered a baseline Hygiene Factor, culture - as defined as a system of shared beliefs and assumptions held by members in a group, could serve as a motivator, especially when viewed as part of an individual’s contribution to an organisation or communities’ higher purpose.

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People’s reasons for pursuing goals tends to be in alignment with their interests and core values, and facilitating the process of service and self-discovery allows them to uncover novel areas of intrigue, while actively fostering relationships in a constructive capacity, and occasionally working with indirect avenues of financial incentive. Novel opportunities and training builds employee confidence, so long as failures can be managed sensitively, especially for those lower in self-efficacy and more likely to internalise the effects of a lack of success.

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Purpose and core values are at the heart of culture and behaviour, for example allowing for autonomy in flexible and remote work implies that an organisation trusts those that they choose to work with long-term, fostering loyalty and responsibility. Over time this creates a community of likeminded individuals, and as the company matures and cements its own cultural values using vision as inspiration, aligning personal and organisational values in this way serves to positively feedback and reinforce higher internal motivators.

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We value employees who live rich and rounded lives. We run a flexible workplace, and we have ever since we were a blacksmith shop that shut down whenever the waves were six feet, hot and glassy… A serious surfer doesn’t plan to go surfing next Tuesday at 2 o’clock; you go surfing when there are waves and the tide and wind are right - Let My People Go Surfing, Yvon Chouinard

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Such internal drivers are found in the higher rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy, as well as McClelland’s Theory of Needs: achievement of personal goals, autonomy, and affiliation. These suggest that arguably, the financial carrot on a stick incentive is one element, but does not equate to delving into, and leveraging personal motivators, which requires frequent introspection on behalf of the individual. However, the rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy are not necessarily pursued in chronological order, and the definition of terms such as ‘self-actualisation’ remain open to wide variability in interpretation, being dependent on both wider societal context and personal perspective.

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2. Going for Goals

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Goal setting is just one of many means of measuring progress. It requires the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) to attain these goals, as well as a trustworthy system by which to measure development. Research as to whether these should be individually or externally-generated is mixed, and may come down to culture, context and personal preference.

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There is evidence to suggest that self-setting goals encourages commitment, which may be because they are also more likely to be based on ability, the belief that they are achievable and the desire to achieve them. Similarly, self-reflection as feedback may develop the autonomy and introspection required to further uncover authentic intrinsic drivers.

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It is preferable to encourage goals that foster engagement with the process, as opposed to being too heavily focused on the outcome, which can hamper adaptation and creativity. In order to develop the KSAs required to meet these goals, companies could actively run complementary training programmes, workshops, or apprenticeships.

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When companies align themselves with a greater purpose, it encourages goals that enable individuals to acknowledge that they are a part of something bigger than themselves - a part of something innovative, of service to the community and other aspects of the value chain, environment, and future generations.

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3. Aligning Teams

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Valence refers to the meaning an employee derives from their work, and is highly individual-dependent. On the surface it may seem as though there could be a general level of tension between external incentives - which need to be set by a company and standardised for everyone in order to achieve a fair contextual framework, and the highly personal and individualised internal motivators and needs - which may not always be consistent throughout an individuals lifetime.

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One of the reasons it can be difficult for a company to cater to such specific needs lies in the challenge of measuring individual performance where this is tied to the team, which becomes increasingly difficult at scale. Therefore, money has come to replace personalised rewards by being culturally accepted as the sole universal motivator. However, studies show that this is often only effective up until a certain point.

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A key tenet of valence and motivation could be described as the strength of authentic desire to meet a personal reward, whether that be a sense of achievement, self-esteem needs, recognition, service, value, advancement or growth. Without planning and theory, we’re at sea without a sextant, relying on the chance currents of life to shift and guide us, instead of learning how to steer ourselves. Making direct decisions requires foresight and knowing the general theme of what we want at the time, while still remaining open to the emergent and unforeseen opportunities and obstacles that will cross our paths along the way. This is akin to the existential flexibility underpinned by purpose and fundamental principles presented by Simon Sinek in his Infinite Game.

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However it should also be accepted that these rewards may not always be work-focused, for example, as employees age they may shift their focus more towards family, in which case having more flexible hours or remote work practices might feel more valuable. There is also a danger in work-based motivators being too effective, for example when they come at the cost of social and lifestyle factors that lead to obsession and burn out, as is culturally common in the startup world. Therefore, fostering cultural cohesion while retaining individual diversity and autonomy can be a fine balance that requires an equal amount of input and alignment between bottom-up and top-down feedback, processes and iterations.

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Extrinsic and intrinsic factors need not be at odds and serve to complement each other when appropriately implemented. In an increasingly information-dense and demanding world, what is of most value to us is where we choose to place our time and attention, and the inextricable link between personal and corporate values could be summarised as finding fulfilment through higher motivators and being of service, applying such attributes as presence, patience, purpose and process.

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The new era of Capitalism in an increasingly uncertain world requires that companies are mission-driven, using purpose as their North Star amidst a sea of change. We are creatures of our environments, and from the micro to the macro, from individuals to organisations and societies: the philosophical and psychological underpinnings of the activities in which we choose to partake means that creating or finding and being a part of an organisation that aligns with your values and contributes to being the change that you want to see in the world, while understanding that there is unity in diversity, is key to co-creating the future we want to live in.

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