A leading software company, CloudHealth Technologies, wrote a blog post last year about company culture, and concluded that the culture of every organisation must necessarily be unique. One of their key ideas, which I’d like to reflect more on here, is that if culture is nurtured it will be more powerful in defining your success as a business than your brand, product or customers.
Why should you care about this?
Consider the following statistic: “57% of a typical purchase decision is made before a customer even talks to a supplier (B2B)”. This statistic explains the sudden boom of inbound marketing activities, but also I think has relevance for your company culture. The final stage of a marketing cycle is to ‘delight’ customers so that they act as brand ambassadors, and I believe the same is applicable to your employees, who are really your most crucial brand ambassadors.
When potential customers first notice your company, their opinion will be founded on what they hear about you from others, the things they see about you in the news, on your website, on your blog. Well, your branding is delivered and maintained by your people. You may define it at a high level, but they are the ones who will work with your customers and inspire them to promote you in the wider market. They are the ones who will write thought leadership content for you, the people who will represent you at events and conferences. Your employees will define your profile in the market, your network, the calibre of your service and your ability to innovate quickly in line with evolving customer expectations.
What about People?
The key ingredient to building and retaining a talented workforce is to promote and foster a culture and work environment that provides employees with challenging work, fulfilling rewards, promotional opportunities and ready access to the leadership team.
In order to put the client first, you must actually put your employees first, because they will be the ones to define the client experience.
Hiring and retaining great people should be a top priority because every great company is a sum of its parts.
Training is of high importance because you should want to help individuals develop themselves and develop the company.
You have the responsibility to provide the career growth opportunities; employees have the responsibility for taking them.
Innovation is not just encouraged; it’s expected.
Autonomy of and respect for the individual is key.
You attract people because of the values you promote, but you retain them because of the values you live.
The last point is especially important. On any journey to define culture you have to come from point A, where you talk about how you want people to act and what you want them to believe, to point B where to live that talk becomes second nature.
In my experience this is probably the biggest area where company cultures fail – when it’s well defined but not lived. It can never be ‘cracked’, it is continually a work in progress. Problems begin if you become complacent.
Hopefully you’re a little more convinced now that Company Culture should be on your agenda in 2016.
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