12 Operational Keys to an Engagement Culture (Behaviors, Not Values Statements)

Most engagement-culture work produces a values poster. The poster gets framed in the lobby and the culture keeps running the way it already was. Culture is not values; culture is behaviors observed on cadence. The 12 keys below are the specific leader and team behaviors that install an engagement culture — each observable, each costable (most cost nothing), each ownable by someone on the team.

The 12 keys break into four clusters: how the team makes decisions (naming the call, the cost of being wrong, the owner, the timeline), how the team handles disagreement (dissent pre-decision is required; dissent post-decision is re-opening the decision), how the team protects time (one protected hour per week, visible enforcement), and how the team recognizes work (judgment over effort, specific over generic, weekly not annual). Each key is a leader habit that the team eventually adopts as its own pattern.

Below is the 12 keys with the mechanics of each, the four-cluster operating model, and how Learn2’s participant-driven frame installs them as team-level defaults rather than as manager discipline.

A company’s culture is the shared values, beliefs and behaviors that determine how people do things in an organization. A team’s culture, while aligned with the larger organizational culture, can often look very different across the organization, and pocket cultures may emerge.  In the midst of organizational change and restructuring, these pocket cultures may collide, and the fallout can be disastrous or, at the very least disheartening. Keep issues related to blending team cultures a top priority and take these steps to ensure a smooth transition.     

1. Plan ahead. Long before any change announcement is made, identify who will be impacted and how. Don’t leave it to chance – plan process, communication, measurement, and results.  
2. Choose the cultural agenda. What is the result you want to see emerge from the combination of the multiple teams? How does this relate to the unique culture that each team brings? The new structure may follow one pocket culture more closely or may create a blend of cultures. Bottom line…define it. Define what it will look like and what it means to processes, individuals and outcomes.  
3. Find the pain points, the opportunities and the strengths from multiple perspectives and build your plan around these. 
4. Diagnose the similarities and differences that matter to determine which gaps need to be closed as you merge. Use interviews, focus groups, accountability mapping, process flow mapping, observation or surveys to gather critical feedback.  
5. Anticipate and expect a few bumps. Senior leaders can find themselves in the uncomfortable position of watching the problem unfold without knowing what to do about it. Ask questions openly and honestly and listen for the answers, sometimes even when you don’t ask the questions.  
6. Involve the employees in the rollout and the vision – Co-create the new culture focusing on the areas of similarity that matter with the newly formed team. Highlight and recognize the areas of similarity as the team moves forward together.  
7. Use the strengths of both teams to choose and declare what to bring forward and what to leave behind. There may be things that don’t work with the expected outcomes of the newly created team, and letting the team declare this will help them own the new future vision. We have done this effectively on a Graffiti Wall in a Merging Teams Workshop called Inspire the Future. 
8. Communicate often / frequently with all. People will be uncertain in the face of change. Frequent, targeted communication will help to build confidence and ensure people are on track as they move forward together.  
9. Leverage opportunities to bring the teams together socially and operationally. Set the stage with opportunities for the new team to naturally play together and work together to solve a challenge using the multiple perspectives to achieve success.   
10. Measure progress along the way. Once you have identified the key measures of cultural and operational success, measure the progress. When you measure it, you have the opportunity to dig deeper, follow up and keep building. More than just annual measurement, use frequent touchpoints to keep the top issues and opportunities top of mind. Help your team to see the improvements as you move forward together.  
11. Celebrate successes together. Highlight the successes related to outcomes. Declare how the team worked together to accomplish the successes – both operationally and culturally.  
12. Emerging culture is as important as emerging results – often, we pay attention to the financials and efficiencies gained…we need to devote equal attention to measuring the people analytics. Use a Cultural Integration Assessment Tool to close the loop on merging the cultures. Using these tools, leaders manage and measure how people are adapting their beliefs and behaviors, thereby measuring outcomes and the probability that the behaviors will show positive returns. 

WHO’S LEARN2?

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