Page 115 - Successful Onboarding

104 • Successful Onboarding

gone to individuals who had never stepped foot on a golf course. By uncov-
ering such misconceptions, a cultural audit enables the onboarding
designer to either dispel them or instruct the new hires how to negotiate
a cultural terrain that might cause them discomfort—before resentments
arise, productivity falls, and people leave.
Cultural audits also provide an opportunity to discover any discord
between a firm’s visual culture and its organizational culture. At Nike’s
corporate headquarters, managers want employees to think like its con-
sumers, so a visual culture of athletic performance reigns. The buildings
are constructed as shrines to athletes, employees walk about in casual
athletic clothing, and the campus includes a great number of special-
ized running tracks and athletic fields. If Nike’s deeper organizational
culture is one of severe competition resembling athletic performance—
if the best answer wins and we don’t attend to the losing ideas except to
learn lessons from them—then the physical culture and organizational
culture align. But if not, then some employees are going to feel con-
fused. A cultural audit would alert Nike to the need to educate new hires
as to the differences between the layers of culture they would encounter
if this discord existed.
Finally, cultural audits are helpful because they afford managers a
chance to discover any disconnect between the firm’s stated corporate cul-
ture and the strategies they are attempting to implement. Heritage and tra-
dition are vitally important to sustain, yet a firm’s stated values cannot
remain stagnant over time; survival requires at least some evolution and
adaptation. Senior leadership needs to question whether implicit, unspo-
ken norms should change to meet strategic imperatives. We suggest that
senior leaders evaluate and update the cultural audit together on an annual
basis, analyzing what kind of cultural change the company must pursue
to support the strategy as well as how the firm can use new hires to drive
cultural change. Middle managers should also participate in these yearly
“cultural summits,” as they are typically the ones in an organization who
translate strategy to boots-on-the-ground action.
You may have your own personal opinions as to which performance val-
ues organizations should emphasize to sustain a healthy culture. In the con-
text of onboarding, however, judging specific performance values misses the