8. Be Intentional About Your Company’s Culture
Company culture. Am I right? You can’t seem to escape it and everyone constantly saying how important it is to an organization. The truth is, if you’re not intentional about your culture, it will simply develop and evolve on its own. That may work out great, but it may burn your company to the ground from the inside. After your vision and mission are set, your culture is the collected values you nurture.
Culture can’t be forced but your core values can be reinforced
Culture can’t be forced but your core values can be reinforced. Start this exercise by first thinking about the current culture that exists in your company.
- Do you celebrate birthdays? What about anniversaries?
- Send out messages to employees that say “I can’t believe it’s going to be your wedding anniversary next week! Wow! 5 years have gone by so fast! Congratulations!” Do you see what I did there?
- Do you pride yourself as a learning organization?
- Make a library and/or a reading area that isn’t right next to the microwave
- Give funding to a promote starting a book club, or give out personal pan pizzas for books read (that one’s for my fellow Gen X’ers out there)
- Are you a data-driven company?
- Make a scrolling and updated series of scoreboards that everyone can see as they walk through the shop
Avoid obviousisms and platitudes like “We work hard and we play hard.” Knock it off Wolf of Wall Street. Make a budgetary line item in your expenses (e.g. Employee Engagement) because what gets funded gets done. Assign a few people and start a Culture Committee and don’t just put an office person in charge that organizes those potluck lunches that are either gone or cold by the time the crews return from their day.