What the Hell is Culture Anyway?!?

Top Takeaways

Once you name your culture, then you can start to grow it.

Elements of a great culture

• Mindset of growth
• Mindset of trust
• Mindset for action intention

How to get your team to buy into the culture

• The key to buy in is that all teams need a champion, checklist and alignment with core values and purpose.
• Don’t give all of the responsibility to one person – Spread out the responsibilities through the organization.

5 Lessons Learned

• If you don’t grow the team, you can’t grow the business.
• Upstream communication is as important as downstream communication.
• If you don’t celebrate your milestones, neither will anybody else.
• The best culture programs aren’t led by leadership, they’re led by champions.
• If you can’t give a tour, you don’t know the culture.

Actionable Items

Name your culture – give it a symbol, give it a mascot, color, logo, make it part of who you are [examples of culture names: Camel Culture, The Petra Way, it could be based on a legendary team member, something that started early in the organization].

Onboarding Checklist – When someone shows up for the first day, have a plan for that person to follow (60-day plan) Lay out who is responsible for what part of onboarding – Think about preventing the statement “I didn’t know that” [tip: Move someone’s first day to Tuesday. Mondays can be so busy and hectic, and it’s more difficult to make it a good day for the new hire].

Team Empowered Appreciation – Have your team give each other appreciation. Use physical thank you cards to show appreciation. [During the pandemic – send an email instead of a physical note. You just have to shift how you do it].

Policy Manual – If your policy manual has more pages than you have people, it needs to be simplified. Stop making rules for the few that break them and start making guidelines for the many that need to thrive in your organization. Pull out legal and health info – and save it somewhere else. Less words, more clear – Guidelines over rules.

BetterBookClub – Stop telling people what to read – Everyone is on their own journey. This is a book club for people to become readers and to recognize those within the organization. This will help you grow your team.

Big Takeaways

• Culture reflects leadership.
• Every company has the culture it deserves.
• Great company culture has a purpose, elements that are repeatable and remarkable, has actions that backup intentions, have champions and checklist.