Articulating culture has been a hot topic in the corporate world for several years. It may have taken over the perpetual top role that rewriting the Mission Statement held for years. I just attended my first professional conference in two years. One of the sessions examined the impact that COVID has had on the culture of organizations. In many instances, it’s blown the previous culture to smithereens! It got me thinking about the changing culture of several organizations with which I’m involved.

While it is tempting to use flowery words to describe an organization’s culture, it really comes down to a simple concept:

Culture is the observable behavior that reveals the genuine beliefs and values of the leaders of an organization.

Simply “saying” what your culture is falls far short of what your behavior shows your true culture to be. Authentic culture statements should be tested by the actual experiences of the internal and external participants.

Culture can be formed by both positive and negative experiences.

• Positive experiences motivate us to capture those experiences for perpetuity. While some of those experiences are created by human interaction, others are from reading and study. Although I didn’t recognize it at the time, there were a couple of courses in school that had a huge impact on my beliefs and values. For example, an Organizational Theory class exposed me to the ideas of a Collegial Organization and the ideals of Professionalization in a Federation Model. It recently dawned on me that The Arkansas Financial Group has become a textbook example of those two concepts.
• Negative experiences motivate us to live in a culture where we strongly desire the absence of that belief or behavior – we know what we don’t want. My first job out of graduate school was in the insurance industry. I could quickly see that the culture of that industry went against virtually everything I believed. Many of the distinguishing characteristics of our company today are the antithesis of that industry – on purpose. This is why a fiduciary standard has deep meaning to us.

Later my observations and experiences resulting from the passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 drew a line in the sand for me regarding my duties to clients. Investments had heavily become tax avoidance driven. With the passage of that legislation, many investment valuations were shattered. As a result of this massive change, one client articulated his expectations for me to help him avoid the Triple-D (the “Dumb Doctor Deal”). That concept became a key element of our culture.

Why is this important to you? Because culture applies to every “entity” in which you are involved: your family, your friends, your church, the charities you support, the businesses you patronize, and the boards you serve. Your satisfaction and enjoyment from your involvement with any of these relationship groups will ultimately depend upon the extent to which they demonstrate a culture that is consistent with your own beliefs and values.

COVID has simply forced all of us to do a reset in areas where inertia had previously allowed us to unconsciously go with the flow. Here’s a little exercise you might consider. Think through your organizations in the “entity” list in the previous paragraph. Are there any where they seem to be out of sync with your beliefs or values? Make a list of their Culture Characteristics based on the behavior you have observed.

• Where are their beliefs and values aligned with yours?
• Where are they misaligned?
• Are they internally focused or externally focused?
• Based on their behavior, for what purpose do they appear to exist?
• What “good” do they create?
• How do they make your life or the lives of others better?
• How do they make the world a better place?

As always, we are here for you. Please email or call if you want to set up a Zoom videoconference meeting or talk by phone.

Rick Adkins, CFP®, ChFC, MBA

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