David Enloe is an organizational culture architect. I found him on LinkedIn and had to find out what that was besides damn good personal branding. I’m always interested in company culture, its value, and how it’s established and sustained.
He was hired as the CEO of Societal CDMO in the midst of the pandemic, coming on board without even an onsite visit, to work with people he had never met. His only contact up to that point was the board, none of the executives.
I asked him about how he drives culture through the organization, and about how to merge cultures when bringing two companies together through an acquisition. His answers got me thinking about what culture really means.
If you had asked me before this interview, I would have said that culture is “the way we do things or how we interact with each other.” These things are still true. As David points out in our conversation, it starts with why we do what we do. In this case serving customers and ultimately patients. But what I learned from talking to him is that culture reaches us on a deeper level. Culture is about trust. Whether in a company, a community or a country, it’s the comfort and the freedom that comes from knowing what to expect from the people around you.
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How do you measure the value of culture? Start with employee retention. Finding a job that fits your skills might be the easy part. Finding one where you are valued and feel like part of the team is a little more difficult.
Culture also affects productivity and scalability. As a company grows, you can’t scale people along with revenue. The way things are done might have to change. Although most people are resistant to change, David says people just need to know they’ll be supported.
We acquired this smaller company in San Diego, August of ‘21. It was a small, very entrepreneurial company.
Everybody had their finger in every pie at all times…
But when somebody's doing everything there, there can be a sense of loss as they start to let go. And so at the bottom of all of this is the T word, isn't it? Trust. You know, they've gotta trust that, that the other people are not gonna let 'em down. And again, that's something we have to bake into our cultural values.
And so if you’ve ever wondered why “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, you might have a better idea after listening to this episode.
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Intro Music stefsax / CC BY 2.5
At the Heart of Culture is Trust