Think about your family. What sort of traditions do you have? What values is it built on? Do you have a very active family or would you all rather eat an entire bag of Fritos on the couch while watching Seinfeld reruns? All of these make up the very fabric of your family. It’s probably influenced by your grandparents and will probably influence the lives of you children in the future. It affects your goals in life and the achievements you will be remembered for. It even effects the relationships you make with others. If you see your family needs to “change” be prepared to meet some resistance because you know mom and dad are pretty set in their ways.
See where I’m going with this?
A couple of weeks ago, I introduced the topic of Corporate Culture. Relating this to family norms and values really can help you see how culture affects all areas of your company’s operations. It IS the lifeblood of your company and it’s hella hard to change. But before we even talk about how to influence it and how to harness its power, it’s important to realize what areas of your company it affects. So let’s give it a shot…
STRATEGY (C-LEVEL)
Potentially the most obvious of these. If you have a conservative culture, then you’re probably going to think long term about your strategy and hire CE(fill in the blank)’s who have a conservative mindset. Since this is where the overall strategic direction of the company is decided, then the company’s culture is without a doubt going to play into it.
OPERATIONS (NOT-C-LEVEL)
The day to day decisions made by everyone without a “CE” before their title obviously are also affected by culture. The strategy and decisions made at the C-level trickle down to the rest of the company, impacting all of the “smaller” decisions that impact the company.
INTERNAL RELATIONSHIPS
So you have the C-Level and everyone else, but you also have how these two groups interact with each other. The culture of some companies may limit the interaction between the two, putting the CEO up in an ivory tower. Others may give all of their employees an “open door” policy to the leaders of the company. Which one’s better? Not for me to decide, but they sure as heck have are determined by culture.
TALENT
There are really two arms to this. One is acquiring new talent. Whether that be kids out of college or pulling them away from other companies, your company’s culture is definitely going to play into their decision. Some people dream of working in a culture like Google’s, while others may work best under a structured, more conservative culture of a big-time bank. Of course, the other arm of this is retaining your top talent. If your culture sucks, then you can’t expect to hold on to your top employees when other companies come knocking on their door.
CUSTOMERS
This one sort of gets forgotten, but your culture certainly affects the interactions you have with customers. We’re talking about the people on the front lines of your business. This can be anything from your website to your retail store employees to your call center to the “social media expert” you just hired to interact with customers on Twitter. Your customers should be able to understand what your culture is and, ideally, this should make them fall even more in love with you. Don’t believe me? Just ask Tony Hsieh of Zappos.
What did I miss?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Jackie, enjoyed the post (always do like dropping by the Curb).
What do you think about external relationships? For example, finding industry partners with complementing cultures to align with and develop mutually beneficial relationships should be included. Any thoughts?
Yeah great point, David. That wouldn't fall under the customer relationship since they're not the end consumer of your product (in most instances). I'm trying to think of an example. Maybe like HP's partnership with Microsoft? They each have their own separate bubbles in which they have their own cultures and, although money is exchanged between them, the consumer is who the employees on the “front lines” are working with. Yet, the culture would definitely influence what sort of other businesses you are looking to partner up with and whether or not you would accept an offered partnership.
I'm still trying to think of a better example where it's not necessarily a vendor type relationship where money is being exchanged for something (in this case, Windows software), but something that's more of just a strategic partnership/alignment. Can you think of a good example?
Thanks for responding. I guess a few examples that come to mind are between services companies and the tools they use. Like our local Apple store has a business manager that works with the Apple Certified Consultants network or Hubspot, Radian6 relationship with an agency. On a local scale how about a restaurant's relationship with nearby hotels or vice versa.
I guess my thought comes from companies not trying to do everything but partnering with related experts to raise the value of the overall experience, product or service.
Is this making sense? Does it fit?
Yeah I think that makes sense. So, for example the culture at Radian 6 would influence what agencies they worked with very closely. Mullen's culture is very similar, therefore they teamed up for Brand Bowl this year. They may avoid working alongside an agency that has an anti “social” mindset. Am I following?
Yep, that is how it makes sense to me.
A better post and nice definition through example.This shows the example of a good culture…
Fantastic Jackie..
{ 1 trackback }