In the final instalment of this three-part series focusing on financial culture, Simon Perks investigates the role that rituals and routines, symbols and stories play in helping organisations to create a culture of financial awareness and accountability.
Rituals and routines
Rituals and routines are the things we do without really thinking about it. The financial processes that just happen on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis, sending a clear message about what’s important to the organisation.
Rituals and routines that contribute to a positive financial culture include:
- open and honest discussion of the organisation’s financial performance and prospects, together with what this means for its activities;
- scrutiny of the financial impact of significant strategic and operational decisions by those charged with making those decisions; and
- non-judgemental after-action reviews of key projects to allow lessons to be learned, especially when things haven’t gone to plan.
For finance teams, however, it is easy for financial rituals and routines – from the monthly accruals process to the preparation of the annual budget – to become ends in themselves, or tasks to be ticked off. But in a positive financial culture, these are regarded rightly as means to serving the organisation and helping it to achieve its goals.
Symbols
Symbols are visual representations of how the organisation is seen by itself and by others. It goes beyond the logo and colour scheme to include ‘softer’ symbols like what people wear, what the offices look like and whether you get biscuits with your tea. Symbols show people what we stand for.
We’re well versed in the symbols of financial excess, like swanky Mayfair corner offices and fleets of private jets, but we’re looking here for symbols that project a more prudent approach to financial management. Most charitable organisations, want to show they're financially stable, but not splashing the cash.
Some suggestions might include:
- a restrained approach to business travel, with the same policies applying to everyone (and a recognition that finding a cheap train fare frees up cash for service delivery);
- replacing things when they need replacing, rather than because there’s a shiny new version available; and
- a relentless focus on reducing inefficiency and waste, whether it’s staff time or printer paper, to show that all of our resources are valuable.
Bear in mind also that symbols play an outsized role in how other people regard the organisation. We want them to see our commitment to making the biggest difference we can with the resources entrusted to us. Arriving at a fundraising event in a lime green Lamborghini might well detract from that.
Stories
Stories are the things people tell each other about the organisation. They’re the myths, anecdotes and legends that become part of organisational lore - the things we remember when we’ve forgotten everything else.
My favourite financial culture story is the (possibly apocryphal) tale of how Sam Walton, founder of retailer Walmart, encouraged employees to bring back freebie pens from their business travels to keep down the cost of stationery.
You don’t need to go quite this far, but wouldn’t it be great if your people told stories about:
- the way the chair of trustees sends back any board papers that don’t include a financial impact assessment (or if the numbers in it don’t add up);
- the time the senior leadership refused to bid for a grant programme until the funders agreed to pay overhead costs – for everyone; and
- the admin assistant who figured out a smarter way of booking travel and saved the organisation £250,000 a year (and who is now head of information systems).
How do we get people to tell these stories? By doing the things that we want them to tell stories about. By being the organisation that inspires them to do so.
A culture of financial awareness and accountability doesn’t just happen. It’s created, nurtured and sustained. The cultural web helps us to explore the elements of this culture and to align them with each other and with our financial goals. To embed them in the organisation’s psyche, and to make them simply the way we do things around here.
For Simon's full series exploring organisational and financial culture, read part 1 and part 2.