Culture Review 2023

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Peter Drucker

Every year, everyone on our team gives an honest review of PD culture. The review includes a list of five words to describe our company culture, what they love about it, what they think should change or improve, and what they think could pose the greatest threat. Outside of those core questions, we sprinkle in a few more to assess how well our culture support individual team members with their personal and professional goals.

Why take time to do this yearly?

We do annual culture review because it serves as a marker in the sand, so to speak. When summer is a distant memory, the beach covered in snow, and the sky gloomy from dusk to dawn, we want to know the strength and the direction of our cultural wind, so that our organizational ship can correct course to reach the shores of our aims.

Company culture is as alive, organic, and changing as the bacteria culture in one’s morning yogurt. As a company grows, so does its risks of culture becoming weakened or mutated. No amount of leadership memos and employee perks can influence the health of culture changes than the values and practices embodied by its people. Annual culture surveys provide an excellent barometer of organizational health. That’s why we do this gut-check every year.

On that note, we are proud to share a report of our 2023 culture review.

Sentiments

Key takeaways

What are people saying about what we got?

Here are the three main takeaways about our culture, straight from the source.

It’s supportive – people feel encouraged to grow, take risks, and help each other professionally and personally in a warm, welcoming, and family-like environment.
It’s authentic – people feel like they can be themselves, whether they’re feeling the highest of highs or experiencing the lowest of lows (thankfully, the latter is far less common).
It’s inspiring – people appreciate PD’s commitment to excellence, continuous improvement, and pushing people to be the best versions of themselves.

What makes PD unique?

Here are the top three reasons out of many unique responses.

Our gritty and innovative culture – we embrace challenges, promote innovation, and aren’t afraid to step out of our comfort zones.
Our focus on accountability and values – we live and breathe our values and keep each other accountable. No exceptions.
Our love of people and personal/professional growth – we genuinely care about our team’s success, as we invest in helping our team achieve their goals and dreams in both professional and personal arenas.

What would you change about PD?

From day one, we’re committed to embracing change — both change by design and change with the times.

Here are three overarching themes on how we can improve.

Keep comms constructive – although it doesn’t help anyone to sugarcoat things, neither does brutal honesty or ALL CAPS in a public setting. If there are learnings to be had or plans to pivot, keep the criticism constructive and the advice actionable.
Encourage a balanced approach to grit – while it’s no surprise that we value grit and perseverance, sometimes it might unintentionally send the message that you have to go it alone. A few extra reminders that it’s ok to reach out to others may go a long way.
Embrace a mix of leadership styles – a few team members suggested that a mix of leadership styles would be beneficial. A collaborative team-based approach to maximize creativity for complex asks and traditional top-down delegation for more straightforward tasks.

What are threats to PD?

With new opportunities come new challenges.

Here’s what our team thought were the biggest three.

Ineffective hiring choices – between hires that don’t genuinely buy into our values and rapid scaling without the proper checks and balances to assess and correct performance, finding the right people at the right time was a big topic on a lot of our team’s mind.
Cultural dilution – as PD expands, our team believes there’s the potential that we could lose our organizational uniqueness and identity between our core values being compromised, the rise of interpersonal conflicts and cultural dilution.
Suboptimal management decisions/behaviours – between rapid adoptions of new processes without adequate lead time to avoid confusion, leaders not leading by example, and concerns of micromanagement eroding employee trust and discouraging candid conversations, the team expressed the potential for management-influenced decisions posing a threat if not handled with care.

Health & Growth

In addition to seeking our team’s opinions on the current state of PD, we also ask everyone to reflect upon their own personal and professional goals and how the company has helped support them in the past 12 months.

Here’s what they had to say.

Health

Overall, the team thought PD did a great job supporting their mental and physical health needs. Some expressed the desire for more ergonomic workspaces (spoilers: since the survey went out, we’ve gone ahead and implemented many changes to support this!) and more information on benefits.

Our team generally tends to grade themselves harder because they have very high standards for themselves, so generally, it’s very common to see lower self-evaluation scores. The lower scores generally stem from team members who express that they’ve not fully taken advantage of everything on offer.

Health Average

4.64/5
How much do you feel PD supports you in your health and wellness goals?

4.20/5
How satisfied are you with your health and wellness goals over the last six months?

Personal & Professional Development

Our team scored themselves similarly when it came to their own personal & professional development.

The main sentiment expressed was that they loved to have more opportunities to connect with mentors and coaches and stretch themselves creatively.

P&P Average

4.60/5
How much do you feel PD supports you in your personal and professional development goals?

4.00/5
How satisfied are you with your personal and professional development achievements over the last six months?

Conclusion

In summary, both the opportunities and pitfalls associated with a growing team were the main focus of the 2023 culture review.

Given that 2023 was a year filled with explosive growth as our team, clientele, and even offices evolved and expanded, it made sense that the team’s priorities paralleled the very reason why we aim to do yearly culture surveys in the first place.

So with that in mind, here’s to striving for an even more prosperous 2024.

Until the next time…
✌

One last thing.

Every year we ask our teammates to provide five words that best describe our culture. We take those words and create wordclouds. The following images were programmatically created based on frequency and theme.