Culture is, essentially, the character of your company. Your culture can either evolve on its own or be purposeful and strategically developed over time – and that choice is up to you.
No matter the culture, it informs the behaviors and attitudes of the people within it. So, of course, you want your company culture to be strong and positive. Cultivating this begins by clearly defining your organization’s vision and mission, and establishing a solid set of uncompromising core values that everybody can get behind. Values like these 10 are the cornerstone of your culture:
1. Service
There are two keys to building a strong service organization: hiring the right attitude and effective training. The first trumps the second. You can always train good people to perform tasks, but you can’t always change attitudes.
2. Teamwork
The best teams are made up of members who each possess a unique set of skills that make the team stronger as a whole.
3. Integrity
Integrity means doing what is right, honest and honorable in all things: always telling the truth, never looking the other ways on matters involving ethics or fairness, being transparent, acknowledging your mistakes, and doing everything possible to correct them. There’s no such thing as degrees of integrity. You either have it, or you don’t.
4. Respect
The quickest way to create a toxic culture is to allow an elitist class of people to develop the idea that “my job is more important than yours” or that “this company wouldn’t survive without me.” In a healthy culture, there’s no place for condescension of any kind. Different opinions should be welcomed and debated respectfully.
5. Accountability
One employee or department cannot proceed until the preceding one has successfully completed its tasks. Accountability is the lubrication that keeps things moving. If done right, it doesn’t need much supervision. Within a good culture, accountability is self-imposed.
6. Excellence
Excellence is a standard that is never compromised. In other words, it actually sets the standards. It’s not the same thing as perfection. Rather, it means never compromising and constantly striving to improve.
7. Empowerment
Empowerment is directly related to confidence. When an employee feels empowered, they are confident in their decisions and client interactions. Making people feel free to take calculated risks and think outside the box is a great culture builder.
8. Adaptivity
In business, you have three options: you can create innovation, you can be an adapter of innovation, or you can be destroyed by innovation. Because the world can change so quickly, if your business is not able to recognize trends and adapt to changes, it will never survive.
9. Relationships
A strong culture embraces relationships that are mutually rewarding. Its people celebrate successes and share failures together. The key to developing this is finding that place where both parties receive a higher value from a relationship than it costs.
10. Last but not Least: Fun!
Every time you bring people together for good, healthy social interaction, where they’re having fun and getting to know each other better, your culture becomes stronger.