7 Elements of a Great Company Culture

Build these things into your culture and your rock star talent will take you to the top.

By Marla Tabaka

IMAGE: Getty Images

What does it really mean to build a strong culture? For some entrepreneurs the very word conjures up images of employees dancing on desks, playing pool in the break room, and napping away in comfy, soundproof enclosures. While fun may be one component of a thriving culture, there's so much more to it. 

Build a culture based on your own values, but don't forget these 7 musts.

1. If you want to be trusted, you must trust.

A culture of trust is imperative, especially if you're employing millennials. If you behave like a helicopter parent, overseeing, or worse, taking over every project, it will directly conflict with the building of trust. What if they make a mistake? I think any successful entrepreneur will tell you that there is no mistake from which you cannot recover. Give your employees clear guidelines and let them spread their wings.

2. Give employees the opportunity to get to know one another.

How can people know, like, and trust one another if they don't have the opportunity to play together? An occasional party or outing is not enough to build and maintain these relationships; weave these events into the fabric of your day-to-day company life. Create little rituals at employee meetings, have themes for certain days of the week and holidays, and engage in community projects together. Find quirky ways to celebrate success, no matter how small, and certainly create friendly competition; both work-related and personal. A chili cook-off and a game-filled afternoon at the park are a couple of things to consider. Too much work? Assign a monthly "culture captain" to plan out the month.

3. Create a cool space.

Tossing a few desks in a room doesn't cut it anymore. Our external environment has a significant impact on our internal thought process. Design a creative corner with bean bag chairs, chalk boards, and a lighthearted theme throughout. Allow employees to bring fun decorations to add to their work area. If you can afford it, hire a designer to create your unique space. A creative environment sets the bar for innovation. Creating a "culture of cool" attracts the kind of people who value the kind of culture you're trying to build.

4. Give 'em free stuff.

Everyone loves free stuff! If you can't afford to supply personal computers or tablets, stock options, and grand parties--no worries, those things will come. In the meantime Friday morning breakfasts, afternoon smoothies, fun work tools, and inexpensive merchandise will go a long way. This will contribute to a work-hard, play-hard environment, making for happy, productive, and creative employees.

5. No jerks allowed.

I can't say this often enough: Hiring for skill alone will doom you to misery. Hire nice people who fit in with the intention design of your culture. Hire people who have a proven work ethic and are team players. Hire for creativity and personality. Sure, experience and skill are important, but not nearly enough to take you to the top of your industry.

6. Encourage growth and ownership.

A strong company culture isn't just about fun: it's about encouraging your employees to see their job as more than just a job--to own their job and their ideas. Once you've build this collaborative, trusting environment, your employees will bring ideas to the table. If it's their idea, put them in charge of it! If an employee wants to learn something new, provide the support for them to do it. Today, innovative companies don't hire employees to remain in one job for an eternity; they hire innovators who will contribute to the future of the company in a powerful way.

7. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Here's where I see entrepreneurs, especially startups, fail most often. When one hand doesn't know what the other is doing you have a recipe for disaster. But communication about processes and workflow aren't enough. Drill your values into your employees with ideas like those above and by demonstrating them in your own behavior. Be authentic and, at times, vulnerable. If an employee isn't performing up to par, don't let your frustration and disappointment grow; engage in thoughtful conversations about it and create a plan for improvement. If an employee has a win, celebrate! 

Building an outstanding culture is not an overnight event, and it's not always easy. You'll hit some bumps in the road. Never forget that your team, not your product, not your bank account, is your number-one asset.

6 Secrets of Business Leaders Who Built Hugely Successful Companies

 

 

1. Communicate from the inside out.

Simon Sinek, author and CEO of the Sinek Group, believes the most awe-inspiring companies begin with a great leader who regularly asks herself “Why?”

Why are you in business? Why should customers care? Popular brands emanate a strong, purposeful mission statement to their customers. Often, people can live without your product or service, but they consistently do business with you because they support what you stand for, including your vision.

Apple’s latest launch of products illustrates this. Visit Apple.com to learn more about the new MacBook and get caught up in how the company describes its latest offering. “With the new MacBook, we set out to do the impossible: engineer a full-size experience into the lightest and most compact Mac notebook ever.”

Apple engages you with a feeling they are conquering the impossible for the user’s ultimate benefit. The brand prioritizes users’ needs to create beautiful, easy-to-use products. To build a successful business, leaders need to fully understand why they are doing what they do and communicate that to their employees and customers. No gimmicks. No fluff. 

2. Shoot the dogs early.
In 1973, Barbara Corcoran started The Corcoran Group with a $1,000 loan from her boyfriend. By 2001, she successfully scaled and sold the company she founded for $66 million. As a leader, she knew her success depended on the overall happiness and productivity of her team members. To ensure her employees had the best working environment, Corcoran routinely weeded out  the complainers and the laggards who negatively impacted everyone else’s performance.

Each year Corcoran cleaned house and let the bottom 25 percent of her sales staff go. She calls this “shooting the dogs early.” By releasing the poorest performers and those who groan and grumble, she maintained high company morale and ensured she retained the best staff possible. 

3. Walk it out.
When building a business, entrepreneurs often get stuck. Completing a simple task, conceiving new ideas or resolving a small problem can feel tantamount to climbing Mount Everest. To overcome an obstacle, you might just want to take a walk.

According to the New York Times, studies have shown that exercise helps you perform better in areas like decision making, organizing your thoughts and thinking creatively. In the workplace, this can translate in a few ways, the simplest of which is taking a quick walk around the office. Encourage your employees to get up and stretch their legs if they find themselves helplessly stuck on a problem.

You can also encourage walking meetings in your office. The Guardian suggests taking four to six people on a walking meeting to get ideas flowing. Set a time limit of 30 minutes to keep from over-exerting everyone, and offer to buy coffee the first few times you go out. Keep track of all the ideas you come up with on your smartphones. 

4. Be transparent.
As more companies open up about their processes and methods, customers are becoming savvier and hungrier for transparency. Fortunately, transparency does not require you to fork over trade secrets but it does mean being honest about how you conduct business. Your customers want to feel they can trust you. Openness and information sharing helps to build that trust.

Clothing company Everlane takes transparency to the next level. While many retailers disclose where their materials are sourced and what kind of factories they use to make their products, Everlane goes a step further and tells shoppers what the company paid for their materials. Every item has a “Transparent Pricing” section that explains how much the materials, labor, duties, transportation, real cost, and markup is for that particular item, comparing it also against how it would be priced at a traditional retailer. By sharing the economics of each garment, Everlane fosters client loyalty, brand trust and the intimacy companies need with customers to prosper. 

5. Encourage your employees to express their creativity.
Profitable and sustainable enterprises thrive on original thinking while copycat businesses shutter their doors as soon as the idea they have stolen loses its relevance. Since the successful conception and development of viable business ideas takes time and requires a flexible corporate structure, try setting aside a dedicated amount of resources to allow your employees to be creative on their own terms.

Google does this by giving its engineers 20 percent of their time to work on any project they want. This allows team members to develop products they are passionate about. Many times, that means more care and attention goes into each effort. Gmail is the most famous consequence of Google’s generous 20 percent time policy. 

6. Work in small groups.
According to the Small Business Chronicle, small groups allow employees to bring their individual skill sets to the table, which can complement and augment others’ talents. Having multiple perspectives can help the group approach a project or issue from different angles. This enables fresh ideas to emerge and mature.

Whenever possible, encourage your coworkers to collaborate in small groups. Businesses flourish when colleagues partner to conceive, develop and implement new concepts that help the company grow. Often, team members would not be able to produce the same sort of ideas alone. The best products and services are seldom built in a vacuum.

5 Tips for Successful Change Management

 

Change is hard, change is constant, and change is how companies evolve. When you bring on an RPO firm, it requires change. The goal of change management is to make change minimally disruptive, so that people can focus on performance while change is implemented. What can you do to make change easier to manage?

Here are five tips to help you navigate and manage change:

1. Develop a common “change” language and tools
When everyone knows the process for how change is communicated and implemented in your organization, they won’t see change as so disruptive. People want to know what’s being changed, how it impacts them, what they need to do, what to expect overall, and who to turn to with questions. By using a common change language and process across the organization (such as Six Sigma), you reduce anxiety and make change more “normal.”

2. Be aware of the ripple effect
Organizations operate as multi-layered, interwoven systems. One small change ripples out and impacts something entirely different. Look out across the organization; then look out even farther. Ask for people’s input and understand how change is going to affect processes and the way things are done. Risk management and change management go hand in hand, so be sure to understand the full impact as deeply as possible.

3. Emphasize your company values
Frame change in light of your company values. Remind people of your culture, your mission, and your values. Share the vision of how the change will benefit the company and employees. When change aligns with shared values, even difficult changes feel right. And that helps to garner a sense of purpose and community.

For example, if your company prioritizes growth and values excellence, moving from an internal to external talent acquisition system in order to accommodate the demands of opening new locations will feel right to employees. However, this will also mean people currently serving as internal recruiters will be out of their jobs or reassigned. The change will be seen as aligning with the priority of growth and as a further way to ensure excellence.

The shared values bond people together as they understand it’s for the “good of the company.”

4. Communicate
You cannot over-communicate when it comes to change. Communicate in a variety of mediums to accommodate people’s different learning styles. Be repetitive and pay attention to the tone and manner you use to express the change. What do people need to know before you make the big announcement? What are they going to be afraid of? Be clear, simple, and answer questions up front to help people navigate the change. Point people to resources and have a central data location they can access if they need more info or to remind them of what they need to do.

5. Involve people in the solution
As an RPO firm, we make a point to include the people impacted by our presence in our onboarding. We ask the employees what they think and for their advice. We want to be a partner, not a competitor, and we certainly don’t want to come in and be seen as “taking over.” By including people who are most impacted by the change, you can help transition roles and responsibilities and leverage the wealth of knowledge and expertise they have.

Change is inevitable and constant. It’s a process and not an event. The easier and more “normal” you can make it, the smoother it will be. The more knowledge and understanding people have about the process, the less anxiety they will feel. Be mindful and thoughtful as you implement change and people will find it easier to embrace.

Emily Gordon joined Seven Step in 2012 as a Strategic Director. Emily brings more than 10 years of talent acquisition experience to lead effective and results-oriented staffing practices. Her focus on improving the hiring process for clients and candidates goes hand-in-hand with her passion for rallying teams to work cohesively to meet mission-critical goals. She has built and implemented multiple national delivery centers while working with one of the largest global staffing and sourcing providers and has acquired a Six Sigma Green Belt Certification. Emily is a University of Michigan graduate who can often be found chanting “GO BLUE” as she cheers on her alma mater or spending time with her five-year-old daughter.

 

Why leaders should care about their company culture

LISA KIMMEL

But how do you create a workplace culture that makes employees feel valued and part of something bigger? By making culture a priority.

Culture is often overlooked as a business driver because it’s an asset without a dollar value. But those who neglect it do so at their peril. When I became general manager at Edelman five years ago, I made culture a priority. We changed how we worked together. That attention to culture has yielded measurable financial results: improving our retention rates, attracting the smartest talent¸ and helping to triple our revenue.

The model we used can be replicated. It’s based on four Cs:

1. Core values: Successful organizations have identified their core values, and those values provide the guideposts for how employees are expected to behave and do business.

For Edelman, a core value is entrepreneurialism. We encourage people to take risks. Whatever your core values, employees need to be aware of them and, more importantly, see them reinforced daily.

2. Co-create: Ask your employees – not just leadership – what kind of culture they want to be a part of. You’ll be amazed at the ideas that flood your inbox when you bring them into the process. At Edelman, we set our annual employee engagement priorities only after seeking employee input through a series of brainstorm sessions.

3. Communicate: Regular communication – not just top-down, but bottom-up and peer-to-peer – within your company is essential to building the right culture. A key element to this is a commitment to transparency with your employees, which builds their trust.

At Edelman, we hold quarterly lunches for peers across our practice groups to ask employees for feedback on how we’re doing, and where we need to improve. That information is then shared back with the leadership team, and where it makes sense, we will adopt or incorporate their feedback into our initiatives.

4. Celebrate: Look for opportunities, both big and small, to let your employees know their work is recognized and valued by leadership. In our client-driven business, people often have to sacrifice their weekends or cancel dinner plans at the last minute. We take the time to celebrate their successes, whether it is a new client win, a remarkable campaign, or something exceptional a team member did to support his or her colleagues.

Each of the four Cs demands authenticity. This isn’t something you can fake, cover off with an e-mail or a staff meeting. It takes a long-term commitment to be different. Make sure anyone who walks through the door knows what your values are and that they are prepared to live them. Relentlessly seek input from your employees to refine the vision and bring it to life.

Your employees, of course, are your most valuable resource, at least when you are in the consulting business. The trick is to make them feel that way.

Lisa Kimmel (@lisakimmel) is general manager of Edelman Toronto (@EdelmanTO). Edelman (@EdelmanPR) is the world’s largest public relations firm. Lisa has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada by the Women’s Executive Network.

10 Leadership Resolutions to Make It a Very Good Year

By Jack and Suzy Welch

New Year resolutions -- who keeps them? Practically no one. But if you're a leader, be it of three people or 3,000, it's your flat-out responsibility to not just go into work every day and improvise around the latest crisis or email flurry or employee meltdown, but to go into work every day with a cohesive plan of action about how you're going to lead. Otherwise, why would anyone follow you, except that they simply have to?

That's no good.

So here's to 2014, and 10 resolutions to make it a very good year -- for you, and for the team you lead.

 1) Get In Their Skin
From the day you become a leader, your biggest role is to build trust, respect and support from your team. A mutual respect. As long as they deliver, you will support them and stand up for them in every way -- and they know it. It's a never-ending job and you can never slip up.

2) Over-Communicate
It's your job to communicate your message, your values, what's right about what's happening, and what's wrong -- over and over and over again. There can be no lack of transparency. Everybody has to be on the same page. Even when you're ready to gag over the message, you have to keep communicating it.

 3) Follow-Up Relentlessly
Just because you say something once, it doesn't mean it's going to happen. Too often, managers think, "Hey, I told my team what to do." Then they come back a week later and nothing has happened. Yes, your job is to set the direction. But you also have to make it your mission to follow up -- relentlessly -- to see that things are moving in the right direction.

 4) Create a Rallying Cry
I've always found that defining an enemy is very helpful. Define a competitor that's coming after you. Rally the team around every win you have against them, every new product you introduce that's better than theirs. Make that competitor come alive as your true enemy and you'll see your team galvanize around beating them and winning in the marketplace.

 5) Realize Personnel Actions Speak Louder Than Words
When you pick someone for a new job, you are defining what's important. Managers love to give speeches about how their new initiative is the most important thing in the world. But then they put whatever warm body happens to be available in charge of it. Nothing could be worse. When you make an personnel appointment, you're doing much more than any speech you could ever give. The people in the organization already know who the star performers are. And matching those stars with the projects you claim are important is absolutely critical for your credibility and the trust you want to build.

 6) Embrace the Generosity Gene
I happen to believe that every good leader loves to give raises to people. They are thrilled to see their employees grow and be promoted. They are turned on by their success. Good leaders understand that they are only as good as the reflected glory of their people -- and so they give until it hurts.

7) Fight Bureaucracy
Remember how much you hated bureaucracy from the bosses above you when they wanted this "i" dotted and this "t" crossed? Guess what? You're now the leader. Don't let bureaucracy creep into your place. Just because it's yours doesn't make it any prettier than when it was someone else's. Get rid of clutter. Bureaucracy slows things down and speed is one of the best competitive advantages you can have.

 8) Find a Better Way
Recognize that in business, somebody out there is always doing something better than you are. Your team can get insular and come to believe they're already doing everything right. Your job is to ask, "How can we do it better? Where can we find someone doing it better?" Finding a better way of doing things every single day can become so much more than a slogan. It can become a way of life and make your group stand out above the rest.

 9) Own Hiring Mistakes
Look, you're not the only person in the history of the universe who has ever made a hiring mistake. Once you understand that hiring is hard work and you'll surely have missteps along the way, realize that you've got to deal with mistakes fast and compassionately. Recognize that it was your fault that the fit didn't work and get on with it. The team will respect you more. The hire you dealt with fairly will respect you more. And your superiors will reward you for your candor and willingness to own up to your error.

10) Dig into Crises
Without doubt, crises are going to erupt in your career. You'll have someone do something wrong or have to face into a violation somewhere in your organization. To make matters worse, when you first hear about it, you're not going to get the whole story -- after all, you're the boss. You're only going to get the tip of the iceberg. Underneath the surface is a very big piece of ice. Your team will come to you and feed you, piece by piece, a slow-drip expose of the crisis. Your job is to dig deep, early and fast, to get it all to the surface. Be candid. Recognize there are no secrets anywhere. Get the right people involved immediately. And you will see a swifter resolution to problems that people all too often try to brush under the table.

Jack Welch is Executive Chairmacrisesn of the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University. Through its Executive MBA program, the Jack Welch Management Institute provides students and organizations with the proven methodologies, immediately actionable practices, and respected credentials needed to win in business.

Suzy Welch is a best-selling author, popular television commentator, and noted business journalist. Her New York Times bestselling book, 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea, presents a powerful decision-making strategy for success at work and in parenting, love and friendship. Together with her husband Jack Welch, Suzy is also co-author of the #1 international bestseller Winning, and its companion volume, Winning: The Answers. Since 2005, they have written business columns for several publications, including Business Week magazine, Thomson Reuters digital platforms, Fortune magazine, and the New York Times syndicate.

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Jack Welch

Data is Worthless if You Don't Communicate It

by Tom Davenport 

There is a pressing need for more businesspeople who can think quantitatively and make decisions based on data and analysis, and businesspeople who can do so will become increasingly valuable. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report on big data, we'll need over 1.5 million more data-savvy managers to take advantage of all the data we generate.

But to borrow a phrase from Professor Xiao-Li Meng — formerly the Chair of the Statistics Department at Harvard and now Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences — you don't need to become a winemaker to become a wine connoisseur. Managers do not need to become quant jocks. But to fill the alarming need highlighted in the McKinsey report, most do need to become better consumers of data, with a better appreciation of quantitative analysis and — just as important — an ability to communicate what the numbers mean.

Too many managers are, with the help of their analyst colleagues, simply compiling vast databases of information that never see the light of day, or that only get disseminated in auto-generated business intelligence reports. As a manager, it's not your job to crunch the numbers; but — as Jinho Kim and I discuss in more detail in Keeping Up with the Quants — it is your job to communicate them. Never make the mistake of assuming that the results will "speak for themselves."

Consider the cautionary tale of Gregor Mendel. Although he discovered the concept of genetic inheritance, his ideas were not adopted during his lifetime because he only published his findings in an obscure Moravian scientific journal, a few reprints of which he mailed to leading scientists.

It's said that Darwin, to whom Mendel sent a reprint of his findings, never even cut the pages to read the geneticist's work. Although he carried out his groundbreaking experiments between 1856 and 1863 — eight years of painstaking research — their significance was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century, long after his death. The lesson: if you're going to spend the better part of a decade on a research project, also put some time and effort into disseminating your results.

One person who has done this very well is Dr. John Gottman, the well-known marriage scientist at the University of Washington. Gottman, working with a statistical colleague, developed a "marriage equation" predicting how likely a marriage is to last over the long term. The equation is based on a couple's ratio of positive to negative interactions during a fifteen minute conversation on a "difficult" topic such as money or in-laws. Pairs who showed affection, humor, or happiness while talking about contentious topics were given a maximum number of points, while those who displayed belligerence or contempt received the minimum. Observing several hundred couples, Gottman and his team were able to score couples' interactions and identify the patterns that predict divorce or a happy marriage. 

This was great work in itself, but Gottman didn't stop there. He and his wife Julie founded a non-profit research institute and a for-profit organization to apply the results through books, DVDs, workshops, and therapist training. They've influenced exponentially more marriages through these outlets than they could possibly ever have done in their own clinic — or if they'd just issued a press release with their findings.

Similarly, at Intuit, George Roumeliotis heads a data science group that analyzes and creates product features based on the vast amount of online data that Intuit collects. For his projects, he recommends a simple framework for communicating about each analysis:

1. My understanding of the business problem
2. How I will measure the business impact
3. What data is available
4. The initial solution hypothesis
5. The solution
6. The business impact of the solution

Note what's not here: details on statistical methods used, regression coefficients, or logarithmic transformations. Most audiences neither understand nor appreciate those details; they care about results and implications. It may be useful to make such information available in an appendix to a report or presentation, but don't let it get in the way of telling a good story with your data — starting with what your audience really needs to know.

Tom Davenport

Thomas H. Davenport is visiting professor at Harvard Business School, the President’s Distinguished Professor of IT and Management at Babson College, and a research fellow at the MIT Center for Digital Business. He is coauthor of the new book Keeping Up with the Quants and the best-selling Competing on Analytics.