Today's question
How do you create a corporate culture from scratch?
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Community Answers Topic: SXSW
Great question! I think you need to first create your company's values. These need to be defined and agreed upon by your leadership team. Questions to ask: How do we treat each other? How doe we treat our customers? What image do we want the public to have of our company? Understanding your values helps to build a foundation for your culture. Otherwise, your culture will define your values and then you may find yourself struggling to change behaviors that don't align with your values or strategy.
Start with your team a truly robust conversation about organizational culture. The most recent hire decision must be flexed against the culture one needs to create. How are and with What are you doing to regularly measure the strength/agility of this agreed organization’s culture.
If you’re not managing your culture someone else is - the competition, the
unions, a key supplier, leaders seeking to carry out their own agenda, influential members of the informal organization. Culture drives strategy and hence it is primary.
The conversation is a great story covering four questions:
What do we believe in?
b. Where are we headed?
c. What make us special?
d. What is it we do that makes a difference in people’s lives?
The shared pattern of behavior transmitted and expressed through this conversation and story are behaviours that build trust. So this is the begining....
Isn't the right question, how do you create an enduring corporate culture, one that's adaptable and resilient? Corporate cultures are created every day from scratch. Statistically, very few make it to their third birthdays. Among those that survive, retaining their identity and uniqueness after more investors come on board and business partners make their demands is a very hard go. Right now, we laud anyone who's made onto the pages of Fast Company or even a thousand tweets. Let's ask more of our great leaders-to be.
Hi Robert: We address that issue with the question how do you maintain a culture as you grow. Stay tuned, it will be up soon.
~Lydia Dishman, co-producer 30 Second MBA
Tap uniqueness in each individual. Don't copy the past experience you may have had in college or other business experiences where you start to standardize or hierarchicalize work for consistency. Or favor a few, like engineers. Connect every person (including adms) to real markets and make them champions for that group, internally. They chose the market or customer. They are then chartered to innovate & problem solve with their external customer group's experience in mind in every internal conversation. It is powerful to keep human agency in the culture and market leadership and customer loyalty. www.carolsanford.com / youtube— carolsanford42
Wise words indeed Carol. Thanks for sharing.
~Lydia Dishman, co-producer 30 Second MBA