Episode Transcript
Lars Nielsen (00:01.912)
Welcome back to Cultures from Hell. This is the podcast where we expose the hidden truth of workplace dynamics and arm you with the insights to build better environments. I'm your host Lars and today we are tackling a topic that can either inspire or utterly demotivate the role of shared purpose.
in an organization. It is a powerful guiding force or just another empty slogan plastered on a wall. Joining me today, as always, is our resident expert on all things company culture, Paulina, co-founder of CultureCoach Foundation. Paulina, welcome back.
Paulina (00:54.018)
Thank you Lars.
Lars Nielsen (00:56.058)
And you are recording from a hotel room today.
Paulina (00:59.934)
Yes, I'm not at home. I'm actually recording from Berlin.
Lars Nielsen (01:04.696)
Okay, our listeners should not say that we're like, we are not passionate about getting these recordings done right.
Paulina (01:12.622)
Absolutely. think next week I'm gonna be somewhere else again.
Lars Nielsen (01:17.774)
Yeah, you're going to be somewhere else again, like the beautiful life of a founder, tech startup founder,
Paulina (01:25.422)
Well, tech, it's not tech, but yeah.
Lars Nielsen (01:29.69)
No, no, it's not tech. It's just for me, it's like I've been in this industry some years now. And for me, when somebody says I'm a founder, I just assume it's tech. Right? Which is stupid, but yeah, that's how it is. My brain is wired that way. Paulina, before we dive into the nitty gritty, you've seen countless...
Paulina (01:39.606)
It's, it's tech. Fair enough. Fair enough.
Paulina (01:47.618)
Hmm.
Lars Nielsen (01:59.174)
company culture through your work with the Culture Code Foundation. Can you take us back to the beginning of your journey and kind of tell us what initially drew you to become an expert in company culture, particularly around this idea of purpose?
Paulina (02:18.176)
Yes, of course I can. Happy to. So for me personally, company culture has never been just a job. For me, it's a kind of a calling. That's a very big word, I know, but I have literally been obsessed with leadership and culture since day one of my career.
throughout the past 15 years, I've worked in places that drained the life out of people and others where everyone would just feel energized just by stepping into the room. So I have always worked on understanding why that is and how to create more of that energizing.
atmosphere in my team, in my own teams, first of all. And then later on, I decided to make this my job. Right. with the culture coach foundation, because that is our mission to bring this kind of atmosphere into more companies. And purpose is actually where that starts. And it's not just what you do, but why it matters what you do.
And that's exactly what I've been chasing my whole career, helping to find people. No, helping people to find that meaning also at work. And yeah, well, and the beautiful thing is my purpose is to bring purpose to other people.
Lars Nielsen (03:57.008)
And I can, I can just say, and I have firsthand experience with you as my manager. I can just say you're doing a great job back then. And, yeah, for me, it's like, when you reach out to me, I wanted to do this podcast and, and talk about this. was like, okay, there's no better person to talk about this than, than you. So hands down, you are, you have achieved what you want to set out to do.
Paulina (04:06.583)
Thank you so much, Lois.
Lars Nielsen (04:24.064)
And there's plenty of more companies to work with when it comes to that.
Paulina (04:24.45)
Thank you.
Paulina (04:28.974)
Thank you so much, Lars.
Lars Nielsen (04:32.124)
What was one of the most eye-opening early experiences you had that really, let's say, hammered home the disconnect between a company's stated value and its actual practices?
Paulina (04:46.734)
Hmm. So actually I'm going to focus on what, um, an experience with the culture code foundation, not from my, from my personal career. Although I have seen that disconnect a couple of times, but, um, this specific client, remember quite vividly there because their CEO kept talking about wanting his employees to take way more ownership. Um, and in.
with in every conversation that we had with him, he was very much drilling down on this. just want, just need them to take, be more, to take over more accountability, to act more as entrepreneurs, which makes a lot of sense in very, very many contexts, right? That is something that many, many CEOs want to see. But in this company, he, he wanted this.
And on the operational side or in reality, every single decision, no matter how small, had to be signed off by like three levels of management. Team leads were reprimanded for taking initiative or, so it was the textbook micromanagement. And there was literally almost zero empowerment.
there was culture fear. People were, were really afraid of taking initiative because they might get punished for it. And so in that kind of context, it's not really surprising that nobody took ownership, right? Because they weren't actually allowed to do so. And that was just so clear to me again, when your systems or your leadership contradict your slogans.
They, people will believe the systems and not the slogan and they will act by what they see or by what they actually live in the company.
Lars Nielsen (06:48.636)
couldn't agree more. again, like back to the whole thing of me just thinking everything is tech. When you come into these tech companies to the headquarters and so on, there's always a slogan on the wall, right? In neon or something like that, purple, pink neon or something like that. And yeah, not everybody lives up to that slogan.
Paulina (07:08.759)
Yes.
Paulina (07:18.713)
There is actually a saying by some management guru and he said if you have to put your values on the wall, that's the best sign that you don't live them.
Lars Nielsen (07:33.23)
Yes, that is 100 % true. When a company's vision or mission statement doesn't, I'm not going do this in quotation marks, reach the floor, meaning it doesn't translate into daily work and decisions, what are the immediate consequences you observe within Teams?
Paulina (07:56.93)
Well, people start to tune out simply. They might start by rolling their eyes. They will stop. Then they will stop listening. And at some point they will simply forget about it altogether. So I've been in multiple meetings where you would ask like different levels of hierarchy about the company's mission.
Lars Nielsen (08:05.116)
That would be me!
Paulina (08:24.686)
or vision or the purpose. And nobody would actually be able to, to give me the same answer or give me an answer at all. So that is always really eye opening also to, to CEOs and to, to upper management to realize, okay, this really hasn't trickled down right. Right. In any way. And if that's the case, obviously if the mission and the vision are guide posts.
for any company. So if the guideposts aren't respected or seen or even at top in the minds of your people, then you will have online teams, you will be working in silos, you will be duplicating work. And you will definitely have very unclear priorities and often pursuing completely different interpretations of what success means. So.
At that point, it's not just a communication issue. It's a trust issue and a results issue.
Lars Nielsen (09:30.746)
And can you, just for the listeners out there, you share a mistake you've seen organizations make when trying to implement a shared purpose that in retrospect turn into a significant learning experience for them?
Paulina (09:45.838)
I'll keep this a bit more general. won't, I won't give a specific thing, a company experience, example, but what I see a lot is companies confusing purpose and vision or purpose and performance goals.
So I've seen leadership teams try to define purpose through quarterly KPIs or financial targets. have people confuse the vision, right? That is what do we want to achieve? It's a what question. And the purpose is a why question. Why is that important? Why does that matter? Right. It isn't a number. It's an emotional anchor.
And in most cases, or ideally, it should connect to your core values as a company, but also what you stand for as a human, just as a business, right? So obviously this gets tricky for certain industries like tobacco or fast fashion, maybe. But even there, you
can define a purpose around transformation, transparency or responsibility. If that is actually something that you focus on, right? Again, don't make up a purpose if it isn't there because that is going to be very helpful. And what I've seen most of the companies do is like confusing purpose with either vision or performance targets.
Or they don't translate it into actionable behaviors. So what does the purpose look like when I walk into the office? And how does it look like if I'm not in the office and I'm not just talking remote, I'm just talking, not working.
Paulina (11:56.82)
And obviously ideally, if you translate it into concrete behaviors, then you also embed it into your hiring decisions, in your feedback rituals, in your reward system. And that's actually the hardest part. And that is where most companies fail to really make sure that all of your systems are consistently aligned to that purpose. So if you, yeah, I'll keep it at that.
Lars Nielsen (12:24.726)
And, and, and if, if a company, let's, let's twist things around. Like if, if a company wants to guarantee their shared purpose fails to resonate with employees, what, what, what should they absolutely do if they want to fail?
Paulina (12:41.28)
Yeah. Since, since purpose, as I said, is an emotional anchor, I would definitely suggest if you want to, if you want to fail at that, keep it abstract and you'll get bonus points if you load it with metrics and acronyms. And the pro level is when you never ever explain what it means for real decisions, real conflicts or real trade-offs.
That way, I'm pretty sure you're guaranteed to have beautiful slogans on the wall and zero impact.
Lars Nielsen (13:21.488)
Thank you very much for that one. We and when I say we, it's you and I and everybody out there. Like we often hear about demotivated teams again in quotation marks. So we often hear about demotivated teams when purpose is lacking. But beyond motivation, what are the crucial aspects of a business are impacted?
Paulina (13:42.221)
Mm-hmm.
Paulina (13:50.342)
So that's super good question because demotivation is usually a starting point for things to go downhill and because it has ripple effects.
And not everyone out there, let me be clear here, not every person out there needs purpose. I think everybody does need purpose, but not for everyone. It has the same amount of importance within your work life, right? But as humans, generally speaking, we do have a need for purpose in our life. But the purpose can also live in your personal life, obviously. It doesn't have to live in your work life.
So, but what we see a lot, especially with younger people is that when purpose is missing and this, motivation is rising, then teams lose alignment. And when you lose the alignment, that means waste of time, duplicated work, missed opportunities. So people really start growing into different directions. And that again leads to growing frustration.
and dropping engagement. And I think we've been down this road a couple of times in this podcast. If your engagement drops, that's when you really have an issue because people will not speak about their mistakes anymore. Will not search constructive conflict to solve problems creatively. Your turnover will increase. Your customers will feel it. Both.
the turnover potentially if the people that are leaving are in sales or customer success, but also because the passion in the product development or in the service delivery is going to drop. So that's when your revenue drops while your costs go up for rehiring, for example, and retraining and la de la de la. So your margins go down.
Paulina (16:06.41)
And suddenly you don't just have a culture problem, you have a business problem. So let me be very, very clear on this point. Purpose isn't a soft thing, like culture isn't a soft thing. It's actually structural.
Lars Nielsen (16:21.856)
And that reminds me of a situation that I personally have encountered. So was part of this company, like great culture. Everybody was passionate about what we did. Everybody loved it. The customers loved us. We had a great product. Yadi, yadi, yadi, right? And then, and I'm not going to go into details why it happens, but the whole thing, like the whole...
Paulina (16:42.051)
Yeah.
Lars Nielsen (16:49.038)
company culture or the energy and everything just went out the window at some point, do some reconstruction. And for me, I was just doing my job as always. And again, I felt like for me, it was the same thing I've always done. I had the same passion and so on until one day a client actually looked at me and said to me like, Hey Lars, I got to ask you, what happened?
Paulina (16:56.289)
Hmm
Lars Nielsen (17:17.072)
And I was like, what are we talking about? And he said like, but you're not listening to us anymore. Like there's no passion in what you're doing. You used to come out like, Hey, look at this great product. Look at this new feature. Like, can we get more clients on and so on. And now you just come out as any other salesperson that I encounter and I hate them. Right.
Paulina (17:17.198)
Hmm.
Paulina (17:37.196)
Yeah. Yeah. And that, that is actually super, super good that you bring this up because that is actually something that I want to give as an advice to our listeners. If you're looking for a new job and you're wondering about the culture.
If you watch out for companies that have really highly rated customer service, where people rave about how well they treat the customers, that is an incredibly powerful sign that they have a really strong internal culture because those teams are super closely connected.
Lars Nielsen (18:16.092)
And now that you're already handing out good advice, let's get more practical. For leaders listening, what's the first step they should take to translate a lofty purpose statement into tangible team rituals or micro decisions? And I'm pleased to explain to me, or please explain to the listeners, what are micro decisions?
Paulina (18:21.207)
Hmm
Paulina (18:40.814)
Hmm. So, uh, I'll start with, um, the second question. So what are micro decisions? Um, for me, a micro decision is, how you decide to show up with for your team, for example, how you decide to.
talk to them and how you decide to set the tone within your meeting. Can be multiple other things too, right? But it's not an actual business decision per se necessarily. It's rather those tiny things that influence it in day to day interaction.
And what I would say is it's always extremely helpful to define your personal leadership vision for your specific team. And that is going to evolve, right? This is not just going to change when you change companies, it's all going to, it's also going to change with time. It's going to change with shifted priorities within the business. but that is something that is a crucial basis to really bring this.
into the forefront of your team's minds. And in order to define your leadership vision, there is this framework where you say you should answer three crucial questions for yourself. So it really takes some time to think about it, to formulate it. And then you can start talking about it to your team. And the three questions that I'm talking about is...
What are we as a team here to achieve? So what is our goalpost or guiding post? And the second question is how do we work together and how do I as a leader support you in that? So what is my role within the team? For example, protecting you from outside attacks, always having your back.
Paulina (20:44.008)
making sure that you have frameworks within which you can move super freely. Making sure that I am there to coach you, whatever it is, depends totally on your setup, on your industry, on your hierarchy level. And then the third question that you have to ask yourself.
And that is the crucial one because I said again, the purpose comes with the why. So why does that matter? Why does it matter what we're doing? How does this connect to the larger company purpose? And that bridge will make the purpose actionable.
It will give you context. It will also be the emotional anchor that is much more related to your own team's daily work. And that just opens up this purpose idea and makes it much more relatable and approachable.
Lars Nielsen (21:56.572)
And can you us a concrete example of a small daily... Okay, I need more coffee. Can you give us a concrete example of a small daily ritual that effectively reinforces a company's purpose?
Paulina (22:15.874)
Hmm. maybe not, maybe not a daily ritual, but I always tell my customers, try to find a compelling image that visually, or visualizes your purpose for the team. That has to do with the fact that the human brain can remember images or stories extremely well, especially in comparison to numbers. are really shh.
at remembering numbers. but for images or stories, that's a different, that's a different story. Jesus. So for example, for example, when I talk about our purpose at the, at the culture coach foundation, right? I always say it's my, it's my purpose to make sure that
Lars Nielsen (22:58.486)
No pun intended.
Paulina (23:15.52)
employees don't go to bed on Sunday night being anxious about Monday morning, but actually being excited to go back to work the next morning. So that is a very concrete image that just nails down our purpose perfectly.
And if you use that, if you use such an image and you talk about it a lot, that image will just really stick in the mind of your people. They can then make it their own and, yeah, really follow along.
Lars Nielsen (23:52.572)
And how can individual employees and even those not in leadership positions contribute to embedding shared purpose in the daily work?
Paulina (24:03.63)
Yeah. So that was actually where I was going with this sentence, make the, make this your own. Right. So you can take the leadership vision and personalize it. And yes, I am aware that a lot of you will have leaders that don't have a leadership vision. I know that a lot of you will be working in a company where the vision and the purpose of the entire company is not clear. So, um, that.
Lars Nielsen (24:10.608)
Mm-hmm.
Paulina (24:32.934)
In that case, I would suggest to you to do the exact same exercise that I've just made for the leadership vision. So ask yourself, what do I want to do here? How do I want to do it? And why does it matter to me personally? So you're basically creating your own vision. And if you do have a leader with a clear vision,
And then you can personalize that by asking yourself, how does this connect to my personal values and why does my work matter to me? And then you can act and then you should obviously act accordingly, right? mean, if you personalize your vision or your purpose for yourself and then you don't act accordingly, then I can't help you.
Even even small things like how you personally give feedback to your peers or your leader or the way you ask for help can reinforce the purpose. So you don't definitely don't need a title to lead culture or to change culture. So you just need some some alignment and in an ideal world.
your personal purpose, your leadership's vision and the company purpose, they will all fit together. If that's the case, congratulations. You're one of the greats.
Lars Nielsen (26:12.752)
And what are some quick, what are some key questions a team should be asking themselves regularly to ensure their micro decisions align with the broader company purpose?
Paulina (26:25.55)
Let me give you a couple. So how does this task help us move closer to our purpose? Could be something you can ask yourself or even as a group, right? Discuss that regularly. That holds true for all of these questions. Second question can be what would our purpose say we should prioritize here, especially when you don't have clear focus on topics. That's a brilliant one.
Third question, are we making decisions that support our long-term values or just short-term goals? Also helps with the prioritization. And the next one is crucial. Do we recognize and reward behaviors that reflect our purpose? Because I see that a lot, like that reward systems.
and envisioned behaviors are actually contradicting each other. And then you will never ever see the kind of behavior that you want to see or that will support the purpose or the mission. Yeah. And these questions can help you keep the purpose alive, especially in moments of pressure.
Lars Nielsen (27:45.316)
And in your experience, what kind of tools or frameworks have proven most effectively in helping organizations bridge this gap?
Paulina (27:54.798)
I think purpose mapping is a great tool. We use it to translate abstract purpose into visible behaviors across different roles. And another one is leadership anchoring. Actually, Lars, let's skip this. Let's skip this question. It's just not really actionable.
Lars Nielsen (28:14.693)
Okay.
Lars Nielsen (28:20.678)
Ta-da, ta-da, ta-da.
Okay, three, two, one. If you had to pick the most important element for a company to focus on when trying to genuinely and we're talking genuinely, embed purpose into its culture, what would it be?
Paulina (28:44.076)
I think I alluded to that already a little bit. Consistency, in so many other instances, consistency is key here as well. So the purpose should ideally show up in how you hire, in how you promote people, in how you make decisions, and even in how you say goodbye to people. And most importantly, in how you reward and acknowledge.
behaviors, results, performances. Right? If your purpose only lives in your onboarding or your town hall, then you don't have a purpose. Culture and purpose is built in repetition and inconsistency.
Lars Nielsen (29:31.606)
And I could, I'm just reflecting on that. And yeah, we need to take this in another episode because...
I have seen it so often, you know, that you're in tone halls or in company meetings, you have managers or executives and so on, that there's just, but we need to lift this, we need to lift this. And then as soon as it's done and the microphones are off, then people are just back to like, and, know, I had just like,
Paulina (30:05.486)
Have a
Lars Nielsen (30:13.656)
image in my head of people going back to their desk, right? After something like that. And then just looking at each other and somebody says like, what a bunch of beep, right? Okay, Paulina, this was again a super interesting conversation. We've gone from dissecting the motivation impact of... Okay, we're going to do that again.
Paulina (30:17.186)
Yeah.
Paulina (30:24.93)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Lars Nielsen (30:43.584)
Paulina, this was again a super interesting conversation. We have gone from dissecting the motivating impact of empty mission statements to uncovering practical ways to embed general purpose into the very fabric of daily work. The key takeaways for our listeners, it seems that purpose isn't just a post on the wall.
Big surprise. It needs to be actively translated through rituals and micro decisions. And it requires a commitment from every level of the organization to avoid becoming just another slogan.
Paulina (31:14.007)
Yeah
Lars Nielsen (31:31.258)
Where can, if people like listen to the episode and they want to reach out to you to get more advice or ask your question or you never know, hire the Culture Code Foundation to go in and revamp the whole culture. Where can they find more about you, the Culture Code Foundation and how can they reach out to you and answer or ask these questions?
Paulina (31:45.624)
Yeah
Paulina (31:57.518)
Yes, so you can always find me on LinkedIn. You can just search for Paulina from the CultiCode Foundation. You can also find me on Instagram. As always, we'll put all of our Instagram or social media handles in the show notes. And you can always visit us at www.culti-code-foundation.com. And if you've got a story that you want to share in this podcast, anonymous or not,
that you'd like us to feature on the show, just drop either Lars or me a DM. We'll be happy to share your story.
Lars Nielsen (32:38.556)
100%. Just reach out. Thank you Paulina for joining me on another episode of Cultures from Hell and for shedding so much light on this critical topic. And to all our listeners, thank you for tuning in. Remember, a thriving culture is built on shared purpose, not just slogans. Until next time, keep questioning your culture.
Paulina (33:07.042)
Thanks everyone and thanks to you Lars.
