Quantity AND Quality

This is a question that I am often asked:
“How do you create a great culture in a business or in a networking group?”

It’s a fantastic question about a topic that I love to talk about.
Culture is a critical key to an organization’s long-term success. It is one of the most important things in a company or group, and it applies to all levels throughout the organization. There are many factors that go into building an organizational culture. The variety of contributing factors includes a blend of attitudes, beliefs, mission, and philosophy that help to create and sustain a successful brand.

Culture Takes Time

Creating culture is a journey, not a destination. You can’t get there overnight; you have to be patient. I believe that culture is created in three primary phases:
Organizational traditions lead to organizational core values which lead to organizational culture.

To me, the creation of culture is straightforward. First, understand the healthy traditions of an organization. Second, consistently implement and practice the organizational core values, then share them, discuss them, and write about them. When you do these two things well, you create an amazing culture.

Get All Levels of the Organization Involved

Collaboration encourages engagement. When everyone in the organization knows the core values and participates in the traditions, they help create a positive culture for the group. In BNI®, the worldwide referral network I founded more than 37 years ago, we have focused on getting a high level of engagement throughout the company. This includes a Franchise Advisory Board to address organizational challenges, a Founder’s Circle to provide feedback about issues concerning the organization, a Board of Advisors made up exclusively of clients to ensure engagement regarding policies that affect the organization globally, and several other entities to help ensure full participation at all levels. Engagement can sometimes be messy, but when done correctly, it encourages a collaborative culture.

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

Remember, if you are part of an organization with a great strategy and a marginal culture, you’ll struggle. If you are part of an organization with a marginal strategy but a great culture, you can do well. However, an organization with a great strategy AND a great culture will be an industry leader. Culture is the secret sauce for organizational success, and as I’ve said many times – Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Business schools often talk about Strategy and typically make it a primary focus. However, culture is much less understood, and it is even more important than strategy for success. Organizational culture affects the way people within an organization interact with one another and the people they serve.

I’d like to know your thoughts about culture – in a company, BNI Chapter, or in another business organization. Share in the comments below.

For business networking success, it is important to understand that referrals take place over time. In BNI®, we use the educational concept called the Referral Confidence Curve. It takes time to receive referrals from networking partners. There is little-to-no chance that someone is going to refer you if they don’t know anything about you. You have to invest the time to build business relationships before you can expect to get referrals from your network.

In my book, “Work Your Network With The 4Cs,” my co-author Dr. Oudi Abouchacra and I share how each of The 4Cs affects the referral quality and quantity within your network. We discuss how Competence, Credibility, Clarity, and Connectivity impact the Referral Confidence Curve and I’ll share more about each of the Cs in future blogs.

Initially, referrals start to happen on a limited and gradual basis. However, everything begins to change when the threshold, called the Confidence Point, is met.
The Confidence Point is depicted as the red X on the graph above.

This point represents a threshold that, once it’s established, changes the curve thereafter. When your network has complete confidence in you, referrals will begin to flow your way with a greater magnitude, and as a result, the curve steepens after the confidence threshold is reached. The Referral Confidence Curve assumes that when people are not confident in you, or your business, or your service or product, you’re not going to get many referrals. And when the Confidence Point is reached, referrals increase more steeply.

It’s interesting to note that not only do those referrals increase in quantity, they often increase in quality, too. When networking partners have confidence in you, they refer others to you with that confidence and begin passing higher quality referrals.
Whatever the type of your business, it will take time before people have enough confidence in your abilities to know that referring other people to you will not hurt their own reputation. Think about it – none of us want to give our best clients and our best customers as referrals until we know that the person is going to do a good job with them.

It’s common for networking group members to test you out, to see if you’re good at what you do. They may use your product or service occasionally to find out how well you do what you say you’re going to do. When a member uses you, that’s really important because they can then confidently refer you to their network. It helps you reach that confidence threshold much quicker.

Earning Confidence

Most professionals know that the results of the business interaction with a potential referral partner and/or their fellow networking member can lead to more referrals from them. They think: this is a friend of mine, I’m in a networking organization with them. I want to make sure and do a good job for them.

I learned this for myself years ago when I bought my house in Los Angeles, California.
I had a lot of work done on the house by a number of contractors, and almost all of them

were BNI members. However, there was one specialty contractor I hired because there was no BNI member for that category in my area. Afterward, I found out from one of the BNI contractors that the specialty contractor had asked the rest of them, ‘Why are you guys busting your butt so hard on this job? I mean, you guys are working really hard.” And one of them replied, ‘Yeah, well, this is the Founder of BNI. You know, we want to do a good job because he’ll refer us to other people.” And they were right, I did.

The key takeaways from the Confidence Point on the graph are that if you have not established confidence with your network, you should not expect many referrals. If you HAVE established confidence within your network, you should expect a steady stream of high-quality referrals over time. Remember, it is critical to your business that others have confidence in you.

Have you experienced more referrals after reaching the Confidence Point with your networking partners?

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