Look at Apple, Coca-Cola, Google, Nike, Under Armour and it’s clear that brand and culture are some of the biggest drivers of a business’ success. But both of these concepts are difficult to grasp – and even harder to directly influence and control.
At our most recent Leadership Group Meetup, Business Psychologist Daniel Vacassin led a workshop on how to align your gym’s culture with its brand; how to use this as a platform for building a meaningful, magnetic community; and what you as the business leader need to do to shape all these things to a deliberate design – not an accidental mishmash.
Here are the key insights.
What is culture?
Culture is a difficult word to define.
Traditional definitions range from ‘the way we do things around here’ to, ‘the rules of engagement: how people think, feel, behave and interact.’ Often, the word ‘culture’ is used to explain anything we can’t easily define about a system or organisation. If staff seem unmotivated, members are uncommunicative, or the gym feels unwelcoming, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what’s causing this – so we just put it down to ‘culture.’ In Dan’s words, we often use culture as a ‘hanger’ for both the good and bad. Anything we can’t get our heads round or have difficulty changing, we say, ‘Oh, it’s a cultural issue’ – and assume there’s very little we can do to change it.
In order to get our arms around culture and make it something we can can grapple with, we need to think of a working definition for our own business and community. Dan’s preferred definition is ‘what you stop noticing after three months in the business,’ but we need to find a version that works for us and our teams – there is no one ‘right’ definition for everyone.
How is culture formed?
Culture isn’t something that can be set and then forgotten about. It’s an interactive, organic thing that adapts to the people within it and the external environment.
We can think about culture as being influenced in four key ways:
- From the inside out – your core values, your ‘why’, your business philosophy
- From the top down – you as a leader and role model
- From the bottom up – the patterns of interaction and behaviour in your staff and members
- From the outside in – the community and wider social norms that surround the business
We need to be clear on the influence from all four of these directions to be able to have an element of control over how our business culture is formed.
Moments that matter
Culture is messy. It’s difficult to control and hard to get hold of. But it’s incredibly important – it’s the foundation of how people feel when they work for us, and what members take away with them at the end of a training session.
Although specific, designed cultural interventions have power (like the Values and Culture workshops that we provide to Leadership Group members, for example) the main creators of culture are the thousands of tiny moments that accumulate to make a whole bigger than their parts.
How our coaches react when a new member walks into the gym; how our team members talk to each other; how our members talk about the gym to their friends and families…all of these things are shaped by our culture.
In our efforts to create a certain culture, we need to pay attention to these small, seemingly insignificant moment – these ‘moments that matter’. Every one of these instances is an opportunity for us as leaders (and our teams) to reinforce a certain culture – to define ‘the way things are done’ in our gym. Dozens or hundreds of these moments will be happening every day, and how we react to them will be reinforcing a certain culture in the business. So whether we shape them consciously or not, they will be having a cumulative effect on how people feel, behave, and think about your gym. Our job as the business leader is to take these opportunities and build an intentional culture that aligns with our goals for the business.
Given that a culture will be formed whether we pay attention to it or not, a useful question to ask ourselves is: what are the consequences of inaction? What’s the worst that could happen if we fail to proactively reinforce the culture we want?
Culture vs brand
Culture and brand are tightly intertwined – but they’re not the same thing. Where culture is generally formed from within (with outside influence) and transmitted externally; brand is your business’ reputation – the perception of the culture in the mind of the observer. And while we can be deliberate about shaping our brand with visual and verbal messaging (we can design an ‘aspirational’ brand that we curate and project), we can’t directly control how our business is perceived by other people.
For a brand to be successful, it needs to be aligned with culture. Otherwise, we’re saying one thing (brand) and doing something else (culture). We can’t follow through with the promises we’ve made to our clients, both prospective and client – and this undermines trust.
The solution: create a culture that you’re proud of, and that ‘fits’ you and the team. Hire in line with those principles and beliefs. And then make these elements visible and present in every touchpoint with the business (we’re back to the moments that matter) – your marketing copy, your client onboarding process, how you treat your staff, your gym decor, and so on. All of these should feel consistent, both internally and externally.