It’s no secret that great companies have a rich culture. But does the culture have a direct impact on one’s company growth? My opinion is that when looking at the granular level, an individual’s work isn’t affected by culture. However, when looking at the company as a whole machine, the movement it’s definitely directed by how solid and healthy the culture is.
Delivering products on time, exceeding expectations, have a clear communication, as well as being late, ignoring customer’s feedback are all results of how well the culture is and how it’s transferred to the employees. So it’s not enough to have a great culture, you also need to communicate it clearly and constantly.
Company culture is like family rules, you have to reinforce them constantly
The lower you go in the hierarchy of an organization, the more the culture is dissipated. It’s crucial for us, the CEOs of the company, to use tactics that aligned all the employees toward the same goal. Only then the whole machine will work exceptionally.
How to build a keep the culture
Company culture should be aligned with CEO's personality
It’s not a surprise that the company is heavily influenced by the CEO’s decisions. Every decision that is made is propagated toward the lower level of employees. These employees collect the decisions and draw conclusions on how this company should behave.
Since the majority of the decisions are done throughout the CEO’s vote, his personality is crucial, so be sure you create the culture in a way that it’s reflecting your principles.
Constant reinforcement
You want to reinforce the culture in every possible way. When having an internal party, it’s a great opportunity to talk about how the company thinks. Same thing goes with social media posts, internal workshops, and period reviews.
You also need to constantly align your employee with the company’s culture. Praise them when they do and communicate with them when you notice a deviation.
Periodically review the culture
Company culture should not be fixed, especially in the beginning. As you grow and discover yourself, you want to slightly modify the culture. Ideally, you would just add or fix some of the existing principles, but don’t worry if there is a massive shift – it’s better now than later.
Once you have a set of solid principles, the culture will behave like a living organism. You would use the phrase: “What my company would do in such a situation?” and based on the culture, you’ll easily find an answer.
Hire people that aligned with the culture
I like thinking of a company as a complex machinery, and each employee is a gear. You need all the gears to move in the correct direction so that the machine to move forward.
It’s better to wait for the right employee in terms of technical skills and cultural alignment, than getting a great technical person that will eventually leave because he/she does not integrate into the company.
Shoutouts
Another very effective trick is to shout-out every employee which makes an action that aligned with the company’s culture.
“John was crushing it, because of his transparency to the client, he managed to …”
Create a channel so that when you make a shoutout, every employee sees it. This way, not only John will benefit from the shoutout, but the team will reinforce the culture.