The Value (and Work) of Culture

"A lot of teams focus on strategy and ignore culture, yet culture trumps strategy every time."
- Jon Gordon

Culture is a big buzz word in sports and business, and rightfully so.  Teams and organizations whose players and employees are actively engaged tend to be more successful.

We praise sports programs like the Duke basketball, Clemson and Alabama Football, and Belichick and his Patriots for their ability to sustain winnings on such high levels, and there are books and articles and studies based on their leadership and their programs' cultures.

According to Jon Gordon in his book, Soup, culture is a direct reflection of the leader and of the people and their values, character, and habits.

Culture and character drives behavior, and behavior drives habits.  Your culture and the character of your team influences what they do, how they do it, and when they do it.  

Having a strong culture is reflected in teams in so many ways.  Having a strong culture is the difference between your athletes showing up early to practice every day and staying late to get extra work in.  Having a strong culture means having teammates bought into doing things for each other.  Having a strong culture means athletes will make sacrifices for what is best for the team.  

It is important to invest the time and energy needed to create the culture that you want.  You can't just talk about having a certain culture and you can't just write your goals down.  These are the first steps, but the real work to creating the culture that you desire is spending time creating an environment that fuels athletes and their performance.

According to Gordon, creating a culture of greatness requires only three principles:

1 - Expect great things to happen.
2 - Expect your people to be their best and don't settle for anything less than excellence.
3 - Coach, train, and develop your team to be their best,

It is important to have a solid vision, and you have to inspire, encourage, motivate and teach your athletes.  Many times, coaches just expect athletes to have the right habits and the right character traits, but everybody isn't born knowing that they have to put in extra time outside of practice to get better - we have to teach them.  The same with culture.  We have to spend the time and energy needed to help them be their best, and we have to make sure that we have an environment that is set up for success.  

Culture is driven by the coach and leaders and works most effectively when everybody buys-in.