Company culture sounds like one of those phrases that belong in massive glass office blocks. You can just picture the CEO lecturing his staff about such nuanced and slippery things.
This is wrong. Dead wrong. In fact, much of the content in this section of this book is, in one way or another, directly related to company culture. In my experience, company culture matters just as much to a three-man business as it does to a listed company.
It’s simple. A company without culture is a company without soul. If there is no clear culture and way of living and doing business, staff are generally disengaged and unhappy at work. When in this state, expect many of them to be quietly looking for another job. Conversely, everyone wants to work with a business to which they feel they truly belong, and where they have a clear sense of purpose.
A strong company culture is the foundation of personal success and growth for your team. This, in turn, creates the foundation for your customer experience – that human thing that makes people feel like they relate to the company.
OBVIOUSLY, MUCH OF THE COMPANY CULTURE IS DEFINED BY the structure of the business, its value proposition, and the way it interacts with customers. Much of this structure is, in turn, defined by your personal values, your sense of purpose and the other personal dynamics we discussed in Stage 1: Grounding. When business leaders and founders are clear and decisive about their personal purpose and values, this translates into a company with a strong core purpose, and this core purpose often translates into an organization with a powerful company culture that delivers strong, profitable returns over the long term.
When founders love their business after it was born, and when they remain committed to driving it forward, the results can be very positive for everyone involved. Tony Hsieh, co-founder of online shoe and clothing shop, Zappos, one of the most dynamic brands on the global stage, speaks about this often. There is no doubt that it is extremely important for businesspeople to think long and hard about their personal purpose and vision, because these aspects of their lives can have a huge impact on the business they create, many years after they have created them.
There are, however, things that leaders, managers and business-owners can focus on in the present day to ensure they do all that is possible to set the right tone and keep the company culture strong and coherent.
1. DISCIPLINE
Success requires strong execution which, to me, de- pends on perseverance and a thick skin. Business will truly test your management skills, your commitment levels and how disciplined you are. How you respond to these tests goes a long way to defining the company culture.
Brian Tracy defines discipline as the key to wealth. He says discipline is the ability to do what you should do when you should do it – whether you want to do it or not. He also says discipline is persistence in action. The more you persist, the more you build your levels of discipline, and the more you have the strength to persist.
2. FOCUS
A lot of entrepreneurs fail simply because they lose focus. As they speak to more customers and suppliers and network with other businesspeople, they discover new opportunities that are unrelated to their current line of business. Exploring these opportunities (which always look amazingly attractive from the perspective of the grind of the current operation) results in a loss of concentration and focus on the current business and its goals.
3. HAVING FUN
This is your life, and it doesn’t last very long. Why bother with all the stress and anxiety of being on the planet if you never enjoy any of the great things out there? Entrepreneurial business is an incredible opportunity to meet new people, discover new things and to be out in the world, rather than spending the bulk of your waking hours trapped behind a desk.
Many of the world’s great entrepreneurial ventures were led by people who had a lot of fun in the process. In fact, I would suggest that all great working environments are fun to work in. Having fun doing business, and enjoying the work environment, is an essential part of coping with the business challenges, stress levels and the hard work that is required.
Loving what you do is a discipline. It’s something you can practice and improve on. My suggestion is to create time in your diary every single day to pause, breathe, look around and enjoy the wonderful experience of being alive and working with energetic and committed people. This time can be ten minutes or an hour. It doesn’t have to be the same amount of time every day. But make sure you do it.
EVEN IF FUN FEELS LIKE A MOUNTAIN, IT CAN STILL BE WORTH THE CLIMB…
IN 2013, I DECIDED TO CLIMB MOUNT KILIMANJARO. I didn’t have any finance or climbing experience. The more I thought about it, however, the more I wanted to do it. It felt right to pursue something that sounded like an impossible kind of fun. One of my motivating forces at the time was the fact that I was meeting so many young South Africans who would list all the reasons that they were unable to succeed. Many of these reasons had something to do with lack of finance and lack of experience in the world of business.
I have always believed that these deficiencies can be overcome, so I decided to see if I could prove it – by climbing Kilimanjaro. I treated the climb as I would any start-up business project. I sought information from experts, people who had done it before, and then I looked for advice from entrepreneurial experts too. A lot of these people got involved in the project in one way or another, and I got to the top of the mountain. I wrote a book about it when I got down, called The Climb; From African’t To AfriCAN.
The book, which can be purchased on Amazon, formed the basis of a motivational talk I developed on the subject. Public speaking (also something I hadn’t done before) has been fun and enlightening, and it is fascinating to me now, years later, to see how central that fun adventure has been to my career. Not only did it deliver career benefits, but it also helped me to understand more about who I am: what motivates me, as well as where some of my hidden skills lie. Crucially, these discoveries happened within the context of my business life, and many of them have turned out to be very relevant to my career today.
Was it easy? No.
Was it fun? Absolutely!
Was it worth it? Yes. In more ways than I can count.
What is Organizational Culture?
A COMPANY’S CULTURE IS DEFINED BY its collective assumptions, values and beliefs. These are reflected in our actions – the way that each staff member goes about their business, shows the world what that company considers to be appropriate and inappropriate behavior[1]. It stands to reason that the company’s values – and ways of thinking and acting – have a strong influence not only on employee behavior, but also on the company’s commercial performance.
One way of exploring company culture that has received a lot of research attention in recent years is the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP)[2]. Here, culture is represented by seven distinct values, as depicted on the following page:
