If your company culture was a person, would you want to be its friend?
Culture is a funny thing. It’s not something tangible, and yet it could be the most valuable asset that you hold. It is the bedrock of thriving organizations, responsible for influencing every aspect of your day to day operations.
A healthy culture creates momentum, while a stagnant culture produces decay. The good news is that like most things, we can choose what we want our culture to be like.
The beginning of the year is a great time to take a deeper look at how we think about culture. We’ve put together 3 steps to help you design a better culture for your organization below. Keep reading and see how you can make some really important decisions that will absolutely affect the success of your organization moving forward.
Step 1. Decide to Design
Culture happens either by default or by design.
We spend a lot of time designing areas in our organizations but so many times we can overlook designing our culture.
Do you have a culture? The answer is yes, but if you haven’t been strategic about shaping it, it’s probably time to take a closer look.
How do you want your teams to operate? What values do you want them to uphold? If you want a fun, collaborative work environment, what specific processes are you putting in place to encourage that?
The first step to designing a better culture is deciding to pay attention to it, think about it, and start designing the type of culture you want to have.
Step 2. Commit to Create
Culture is about more than simply smiling at strangers when they walk through your doors or having a 15-minute napping policy like Google. The definition of culture is the sum makeup of who we are as an organization. Culture is who you are, not what you do.
A healthy culture starts from the leader. Only when you’ve committed to going there yourself can you expect your team to follow. Start with a commitment to yourself and your team to create a pathway to a healthy culture and take daily steps towards getting there.
You can create a list of values, important truths that clearly outline and form the basis for how you want your team to think, act, and respond. Carefully consider the cost of what you are writing, too. All too often organizations start off with ambitious values that end up discarded and forgotten because the vision was abandoned.
Your values should drive your actions, your beliefs, and influence every decision your organization makes — from new hires to the types of projects you decide to take on or turn down.
Pro Tip: use #popsigns to promote your values in a fun, honest way
Step 3. Purpose to Practice
The number one reason why organizations fail is because they lack focus. Often times this happens by accident, little by little over time. It’s not that leaders set out to lose focus, but often get distracted by goals that are off-target. Without practicing what’s important, the goal gets fuzzy and we divert to a default state.
Like everything, culture has a default state and it’s not pretty. Healthy culture needs attention and thought, it needs to be designed and crafted meticulously, taught by example, pioneered and evangelized throughout your organization.
A daily discipline to teach, inspire, correct and craft the culture will sharpen your focus as a team and eliminate distraction traps that stand in the way of success.
Healthy or toxic, the choice is yours.
Culture is the plate on which we serve our clients and guests. A healthy culture makes the presentation beautiful and enjoyable. A corrupt culture is messy and in many cases can be toxic, not only to the people you are trying to serve, but to your staff, teams, and actual product.
A healthy culture is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.
If you struggle from low engagement on your teams, or if you’re not really sure if your guests feel welcome or not, chances are you might need to spend some time designing your culture.
Every day, people like you dream of how they can create a warm environment for their teams and the people they serve. #popsigns is a product that helps you to promote your values and reinforce your commitment to creating a healthy culture in a fun, honest way. You‘ll see the results instantly on people’s faces.
Many people will struggle to find a way to influence their teams and organizations towards a positive culture, but you don’t have to struggle.