One of the questions that are frequently asked online is How do you build a good company culture?
Many companies have different ideas on how culture is established.
One of the first companies that I worked for decided to establish a pre-built defined company culture, the executives got together and wrote down 10 points of culture that they wanted everyone to adhere to.
I was a little confused by this at the time, I asked them “shouldn’t we just put our pillars of belief, and then allow the employees to make the culture”?
This comment was met with a glance as if to say Oh young. Christopher, how little you know…
The challenge with this approach is it became 10 things that got put on the wall, but rarely reviewed.
The minute one of the upper management broke that company culture, was the minute the entire structure fell. Only a short time after that breach of that pillar of belief, the entire fabric of the company culture dwindled until there was no longer a company.
Then another company that I worked for, had its culture already established. The company itself was thriving. Even to the point of making double sometimes even triple digit gains. Year-over-year.
The problem with this culture was it was used almost like a bludgeon.
They claimed that they were open to ideas, questions, and even altering viewpoints. However, unless your conclusions at the end of the day fell into perfect alignment with what they already predetermined was real or true, you eventually became an outsider. And therefore no longer a fit within the company culture.
Eventually, you find yourself with large swaths of former employees, and I was one of them.
I can go on giving examples of how culture has succeeded or failed, but I want to focus on answering the question, what is company culture?
Some companies believe their culture are their pillars of belief
Other companies don’t have pillars and make their culture sales/work centric
However, the definition that I gravitate to is the one we landed on with Revity marketing agency which I’ll define in a minute.
In another blog post, we talked about our pillars of belief.
The pillars are essential because it sets the tone and the stage for what we’re trying to work toward. However, our pillars of belief are not our company culture. This is a common misconception.
The culture that gets built within our company, is how our employees understand those pillars of belief and utilize them within their daily lives.
Company culture is how your employees understand your pillars of belief and then using those pillars, how they treat others within the organization.
Pillars of belief play a crucial role in establishing company culture. It sets the foundation for how we should guide our actions and make decisions both internally and client facing.
But internally, company culture is how your workforce treats each other.
So, even with established pillars, can a company still foster a bad company culture? Absolutely
You can have a company culture that’s negative, toxic, and dysfunctional.
This is absolutely a type of culture.
Many of the failures that happen within this realm are because leadership doesn’t adhere to the pillars, or a department doesn’t believe or adhere to the pillars.
When a company doesn’t have pillars, the likely hood of that company evolving a toxic culture increases.
How do you build a good company culture?
If your company decides to go as far as building pillars of belief, really take some time to decide the process of selecting what pillars are important to you.
Read good books. Some of the books we have referenced are in the resource section of this website.
But there are plenty of good business books out there from which to draw pillars of belief. Maybe you don’t use the ones exactly from the book, but only use them as inspiration to writing your own.
The key is, however, once you decide what those pillars are, as guiding principles for your decisions within the company, be sure to protect them ferociously.
Next, once those pillars are established, people are looking to the leadership for adherence, clarification, and implementation of them.
Unless upper management is bought in and adheres to them, and actively seeks to utilize them as a daily tool, the rest of the company will hold it in similar regard. So if as an upper management team, you are consistently talking about how the pillars are applied to the daily decisions of the business, both on the customer side and internally, the rest of your team will follow the same patterns.
The speed of the team is the speed of the leaders.
According to the new corporate structure, our leaders support those within their care.
Using the pillars as a teaching tool becomes important. When a director comes and asks me about a situation in what they should do, I generally take a few approaches.
1. Before a director brings me a question, I generally encourage them to have two potential solutions. The CEO of our company was actually the one who established that, and I adore it. They have thought about the question and potential solutions and have time invested in it. At the end of the day I may pick option three, but at least shows me that they’re bought in.
2. Before I give my answer to their question, I asked the director what they feel they should do. Again using questions as a guiding tool, I want to know their thoughts and opinions regarding the scenario. Whether or not it is something that I would do, it helps me understand where that leader is within our company. Once they’ve shared their opinion, we can drill down as to the merits of it. His also shows that I respect their position within the company and want to maintain their authority in the jurisdiction they’ve been assigned to care for within the company.
3. If both the suggestions, or their opinion is entirely off base,( this could be because they don’t have all the information that management has at that moment) I will then give my opinion, but then ask what they feel about it and if they would change anything. To create a culture of mutual trust, my job is to guide but to also be open to alternatives at the same time.
I believe one of the hardest aspects of creating a culture for a company in this manner is unlike having a checklist, many targets are fluid in their execution and need to allow time for people to adopt and implement. It requires a lot of patience, it requires a lot of training, questions, and even internal development.
But once your positive company culture has been established, you’ll find that your workforce wants to do their best, wants to contribute, and wants to be a force for good in the development and continued improvements within the company.
When every single person has a bit of ownership over the positions that they’ve been given, the top-down dictation becomes irrelevant. And, for the management team, once the cream has risen, and those who want to be there are there, it’s more about correction than it is massive overhauling.
To summarize, company culture is ultimately establishing the beliefs of your company and protecting those beliefs ferociously, teaching them diligently, and encouraging and uplifting your teams to live them. Those who participate and
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