It Starts at the Top
If you own your business, then the company’s culture begins with you. It starts when you are building the business, whether you have just a few employees or a rapidly growing team. Culture is developed in the way that you interact with your key stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers, the communities where you live and work and investors, if applicable. Your voice dictates the company’s voice. Keep that in mind during both external and internal communications. If you put on one face to the public, but then turn around and do a 180 with your employees, that will soon be discovered and backfire. Transparency and values are your guiding lights.
Navigating Growing Pains
As your company grows, it becomes harder to maintain your culture. That’s the trick—if you can continue to add employees, customers and other stakeholders, while maintaining what you stand for, your company culture will flourish. That means making some tough decisions: turning away business if it isn’t a good fit or letting go of employees that don’t align with your culture. As the leader, you have to be the one to perform that litmus test of what fits and what doesn’t, and don’t look back.
Staying True to Your Culture
If you haven’t created a vision statement yet, start there. Then, build upon that by listing your company values. What’s most important to you and your team? Is it creativity and innovation? Individuality? Having a flat organization? The more specific you can get, the easier it is to promote what makes your company special, and that attracts the right kind of business and the type of employees that will want to show up for you, every day.
Not sure where to start? Build the foundation of your culture with us.
By Blair Koch
