It is safe to assume that everyone knows the key benefits of embracing gratitude at your workplace.

Grateful employees -> Happy employees -> Productive employees -> Happy customers -> More profits -> Happy shareholders.

The virtuous cycle brings together an “everybody wins” scenario.

If this is so simple, why all the organizations in the world are not embracing gratitude strategically?

The key issues are as follows:

• When something is too familiar, you tend to take it for granted. One can take an idealistic posture that gratitude “must be already in place.”
• There is also the possibility that gratitude is considered as a “nice to have” soft skill rather than something strategic to the organization

So, unless the leadership is behind this in a big way, any attempt to implement a practice of gratitude within the workplace gets fizzled out by a minority of cynical people within the same workplace.

There is where we bring the connection of gratitude to hack the company culture to the forefront. Any good leader will care about the company culture so if there is a program that will help build a solid company culture, they are sure to be open.

In the simplest form, the culture of a company is comprised of default behaviors and rituals of people who are part of it. Every good leader’s goal is to have these rituals and behaviors be in line with the company values to support the mission of the company ultimately to realize the company vision. If that happens, it will lay the foundation to build a great company culture. Of course, the basic assumption here is that the following are true:

• the organization has an inspiring vision
• the organization has a compelling mission
• the organization’s stated values are meaningful
• the organization’s hiring is focused on people that will be a fit for the culture that is being built.

The next step is to use educational materials (video , book etc.) that highlight the practical reasons (not just the moral, ethical, social reasons) to practice gratitude.

So, we have got the buy-in from leadership because of the connection to the culture. We have got the buy-in from people as we raised their awareness about the practical reasons to be grateful.

The final step is to bring a collection of thank you cards that are beautifully designed with messages that highlight the kind of behaviors and rituals that need to be rewarded to build a strong culture.

We make these cards available at break rooms and any other place frequented by employees with a call to action such as “Someone made your day. It’s now your turn to make their day”.

Out of curiosity, people start browsing through these cards and a subset of them will think and reflect on what they need to do to deserve one of those cards.

The leadership team can kickstart the engine by giving a few employees (role models) who demonstrated the behaviors personalized thank you cards. It will not only make the day of the recipients, but also strengthens the highlighted behavior some more.

When others see these cards in the recipients’ cubicles, more people will take the initiative to give the appropriate thank you cards to their deserving colleagues.

The virtuous cycle begins taking shape.

Two Stories

Let us start with two fictional stories to make a point.

The Story of Going Places, Inc.

George runs the consulting division at Going Places, Inc.

George, as expected, has the same problem as his counterpart Paul at Losing Soon, Inc.

George discusses his situation with three mentors and created a simple office hours program within the company with dozen Senior consultants as a giving back initiative. These were the first set of mentors in the pilot program.

George knew that these mentors would continue to give only when they find giving a meaningful activity. So, from the get go, he designed the program with a feedback loop powered by gratitude.

The dozen senior consultants open up 3-4 slots on their calendar over the next month and announce discusses discussion topics that are their core strengths. Any budding consultant could sign up for a mini-mentoring session during those open hours.

At the end of the mentoring session, mentee would get an email for feedback and an option to send a digital thank you card (catalog shown in Appendix A).

A “No” for sending a digital thank you card was recorded in the database as feedback.

An “Yes” would take them to a collection of thoughtful cards to choose as a thank you card. The menthe picks the card and optionally adds a thank you note and sends to the mentor.

The mentor gets to see the card and the note both of which get added to his mentor profile with time, date and a link to the sender’s profile.

After a few mentoring sessions, the first set of mentors’ profiles were enriched by all sort of digital thank you cards. Just browsing through them and the attached notes with those cards made their day. These consultant mentors were more than motivated to do more.

More office hours were made available, leading to more mentoring sessions and those were leading to more digital thank you cards.

Those looking at their profiles were treating these mentors as if they were rockstars in the company.

Going Places, Inc was on a virtuous cycle gf growth – it was truly going places.

What is the point?

The difference between the two companies above was the culture that was created in these companies. Losing Soon, Inc was a victim of a sub-optimal culture and Going Places, Inc was the beneficiary of a strong learning and sharing culture with the power of gratitude as one of the pillars supporting from within.

The Story of Losing Soon, Inc.

Paul runs the consulting division of Losing Soon, Inc. There is no question that there is demand out there, but Paul’s struggle is how to get every one on his team to stay current. With technology changing at breathtaking speed, it seems like there is a perennial catching up required by everyone.

Paul gets a new training budget approved to arrest this problem. However, because most consultants are traveling, getting people to attend training sessions across multiple time zones is an issue.

Paul has an idea – he mandates that every single person needs to teach what they are good at for a prescribed number of hours per month in order to be eligible for a quarterly bonus.

That sounds like a good idea on paper, but bombs in real life. There were scheduling conflicts, but were resolved with good systems. A few sessions happened too, but slowly they all tapered off as there was no interest from both the givers and receivers.

The real problem was that receivers were doing it because it was mandated. They never acknowledged the effort put in by the givers. Without encouraging feedback, the givers felt they were doing a thankless job. The meaning was missing. Soon, they lost interest to continue to give.

Losing Soon, Inc enters a vicious cycle leading to slow demise.

Let us start with the basic question here:

What is an Organizational Culture?

There are so many definitions of organizational culture. Here are a few to start with:

“Culture is how organizations ‘do things’.” — Robbie Katanga

“Organizational culture is the sum of values and rituals which serve as ‘glue’ to integrate the members of the organization.” — Richard Perrin

“Organizational culture is civilization in the workplace.” — Alan Adler

Here is a card that employees at Nordstrom receive in the form of a simplified manual. Of course, there are normal rules in an employee handbook – this is the simplified version about how to deal with customers.

Welcome to Nordstrom

We’re glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them.

Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.

Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division general manager any question at any time.

You can see how such an approach will heavily influence the behaviors and actions of the employees at Nordstrom.

To keep it simple, we can say an organization’s culture is a collection of default behaviors of people who are within it. The leader’s hope is that these default behaviors are in line with the values of the organization and are geared towards achieving the vision set forth for the organization.

The culture matters much more than what the naked eye sees.

Why Culture Matters

Peter Drucker said years ago – “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

We have seen organizations with awesome cultures (Eg: Southwest Airlines, Zappos, Starbucks, Nordstrom ) have thrived during good and bad times.

I am sure we both know that Drucker does not imply strategy is not important.

Far from it.

But, we know that without execution, strategy has no real meaning.

We also know that good execution is a well co-ordinated set of actions by the people within the organization.

Fortunately or unfortunately these actions are heavily influenced by the default set of behaviors of the people ( i.e. the culture ) within the organization.

Hence the statement, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”

Culture is the invisible force that will influence whether all the people are working towards making progress or fighting among themselves and getting tired.

Building a Good Culture

It starts with a vision and mission that are so compelling that will implicitly motivate people to go to work. The best vision and mission statements are simple and uplifting.

Google’s mission is to organize world’s knowledge.

Simple.

Next comes the values. Values are guiding principles that will provide a framework to decide and act in almost all situations.

Next comes the behaviors and rituals of people within the organization.

As you can imagine, things get pretty complex as people are involved. Vision, Mission and Values are defined once and are sort of fixed until they are revisited. However, people change and if they are not hired without much consideration to culture-fit, problems arise sooner than later – especially if someone is a high-performing individual, but does not make any attempt to play the game in line with the values and beliefs of the organization.

The Focus Factor

Assuming that we have a compelling vision, mission and values that resonate with people and we hire talent with a culture-fit, it is still NOT easy to nurture the culture throughout the organization.

Why?

Because the way culture manifests is not in the manuals and cheatsheets, but in behaviors of people within the organization.

For building a good culture in the long run, the focus has to be on nurturing the right rituals and behaviors. For the new people on the team, rules are not what they find in the rule book, but what they can observe and interpret from the set of behaviors and rituals from the people that were already part of the team.

So good behaviors that are nurtured can create a virtuous cycle and bad behaviors that are tolerated can lead to a vicious cycle.

The Gratitude Edge

This is where gratitude comes into play.

Gratitude in general is a good thing to put in practice because research has shown that grateful employees are happy and we all know that happy employees are more productive. For the organization, increased productivity means boost in profits.

Before we make a connection to how the practice of gratitude will help build the company culture, we need to raise the level of awareness about the need for expressing gratitude. Unless we make a business case for practicing gratitude, the entire concept may look like woo-woo or new age stuff.

That’s exactly the case I made in my book “Gratitude: Growing and Changing Your World One Thank You at a Time” (foreword by Marshall Goldsmith)

Here is the link to the YouTube video on the same topic:

Designing a Gratitude Practice to Hack the Company Culture

Imagine a set of gratitude cards that are designed where the behaviors that nurture the culture are highlighted.

Example 2: Thoughtful Connections

A sample card below highlights the power of opening your network to someone that might benefit from a thoughtful connection.

A collection of early designs are here:

http://thoughtful.cards/gratitude-gallery

Every time someone exhibits one of the said behaviors and they receive a nicely-designed thank you card, a few things outlined below happen:

• the person feels acknowledged
• the said behavior is reinforced
• others around the person notice and observe what behavior is rewarded

Do this more often and it turns into a virtuous cycle helping reinforce the culture one thread by another thread.

The card collections are placed at break rooms, library or any other place that will catch the attention of employees.

The stacks of cards can be placed under a notice that looks like something like:

Someone made your day.

It’s your turn to make their day.

While digital versions of similar cards can be used to augment this effort, there is magic in the offline world. For starters, a few recipients might post the cards they receive on their cubicles. Watching a few of these cards in their colleagues’ cubicles might create a hunger in others to do something that will be worthy enough to receive such cards by others they help out.

That’s the start of a virtuous cycle of growth, powered by gratitude.

Summary of Steps to Institute a Practice of Gratitude While Building a Strong Company Culture

Here are the five steps to make magic happen:

#1. Define Your Vision and Mission | This will set what the future will look like (vision) and what you are doing today (mission) to realize that future state.

#2. Define Your Values | These are guiding principles that will help your employees to help with their decision-making on behalf of the company.

#3. Map Behaviors to Values | This will identify behaviors when exhibited are in-line with your values.

#4. Map Gratitude Cards to Behaviors | Choose from the collection of thoughtful thank you cards mapping them to the behaviors that need to be encouraged.

#5. Make These Cards Available Freely | The last, but important step is to reduce friction. These cards should be available at places that your people frequently visit ( break rooms, library etc.)