Creating a High-Performance Culture
Article by Lura McBride, President & CEO | Van Meter, Inc.
As a University of Iowa graduate, I love my Iowa Hawkeyes, and if you followed March Madness, you know how close they came to winning the national championship in women’s basketball this year. Head Coach Lisa Bluder and Associate Head Coach Jan Jensen are inspirational leaders that have developed a high-performance culture in the Iowa Women’s Basketball program. In this video clip from a recent press conference, Coach Bluder talks about creating an environment where ‘everyone matters.’ Those are more than words on the wall in their locker room – they believe deeply in them, and they live them in all that they do. Her words made me reflect on our culture at Van Meter and the commitment our employee-owners have to living our values. Here are a few highlights of how we have worked toward creating a high-performance culture.
1. DEFINE YOUR VALUES
Culture is the outcome when people live your organization’s values. The first step is to define what you value. What does your company stand for? What do you believe in? What is important to creating success and achieving your purpose?
Over 15 years ago, we got specific in defining our company values and created our five P’s: People, Partners, Progress, Place and Profit. They are the pillars that guide how we operate. There is an order to them too. Our People come first, and when we focus on bettering the first four P’s, the fifth one, the Profit will take care of itself. We are a ‘People P to the Profit P’ organization.
2. SET EXPECTATIONS
After we defined what mattered most to us, we got prescriptive about what our values looked like in action. As a 100 percent employee-owned company where everyone has a stake in the company’s success, we set expectations about how we do things at Van Meter, so we were all on the same page—figuratively and literally. We have an actual document called the “Anatomy of an Employee-Owner.”
Our anatomy is the essence of who we are and how we work together. It includes expected ways to live our values—things like assuming positive intent, having each other’s back, telling me first, exceeding expectations, stretching what’s possible to make progress and making a difference in the places where we work and live. The anatomy establishes common expectations, vocabulary and behaviors for each P, that when lived by 800 employee-owners, is powering our high-performance culture.
3. ALIGN THE TEAM
You’ve got to rally the team around the values and expectations. This starts in the hiring process – ensuring that applicants know what we value and assessing what they value. It is when we mutually make hiring choices based on alignment in values, that the employment and culture fit is strong. Upon joining the company, our people participate in a year-long in-boarding program. The training isn’t about their job-specific tasks. It’s all about what it means to be an all-in employee-owner at Van Meter and live our 5P values. After all, it’s our people, aligned to our purpose and our values, who create the culture.
4. KEEP SCORE
Keeping score is important for team alignment and making necessary adjustments to the game plan. We keep score qualitatively—always seeking to understand what people are saying and how people are feeling. And we keep score quantitatively through workforce retention, people engagement and financial and share price performance. Employee feedback surveys and dashboards that track key business metrics are all needed. Our People scores are most important, and as we look over the last 15 years of being a People P to a Profit P business, it’s working. There is a direct correlation from our People scores to our Profit scores.
Success doesn’t happen—in sports or business—without a culture where everyone is aligned to the goal they’re working toward and knows the role they play in making it happen. Defining values, setting expectations around living the values, ensuring alignment and keeping score requires leadership and intention. At Van Meter, it's not by chance, or by luck, but through great focus and great people that a great culture is established. Our people live our values, to create value for our partners and in turn, grow our company value—all through a high-performance culture.
