Culture is a rich recipe

We believe that it is a rich recipe comprising two core ingredients:

Common Purpose – why your people are working together, the vision for the business your core values and core messages.

The core values express how your people have agreed to work together and interface with each other, your customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.

Community – your people feeling they belong to a common place (the business),  with shared goals, and they are both respected and valued.

Purpose and core values provide the foundations on which community can be built.  Your core messages help you communicate this.  Confidence in that community, enables you to build three vital elements of high performance teams:

(i)  Alignment – the degree to which everybody feels that they are in the same boat, rowing in the same direction and for the same reason

(ii) Support – the degree to which your people feel that their position is supported by other team members and when undertaking risk they will not be isolated.

(iii) Effective communication – open, transparent communication reduces negativity and encourages people to be constructively challenging; as a result they overcome obstacles and implement solutions a lot more quickly.

Of course, perfection is rarely reached especially in a constantly moving entity.  However, each step of improvement, towards it, will provide significant benefits for everyone involved in your business and improve your productivity.

A big question is: how do you measure the rate of improvement and the degree to which it is consistent across your business.  The answer is simply: by implementing a proper process.

Importance of Process

We find, today, leaders within SMEs readily see the importance of culture in achieving success.  However, they rarely see the importance of process in building, embedding and protecting that culture as the business grows.

Culture is no different than any other business resource: it can be processed to make sure that it is managed properly, constantly improved and enduring.

The key 10 benefits of a great culture

When properly formulated, we see that a great culture has 10 key benefits to a business.  It provides the platform from which you can build:

1:   the crux of a great business – motivated, loyal and positive people

2:   increased creativity and productivity across all areas of the business

3:  more effective teams, taking on more responsibility and working with great team spirit

4:   better engagement between you and your people

5:  more effective communication with your customers and other stakeholders

6:  a more dynamic and loyal customer community who are attracted to and understand your culture 

7:   more loyal customers who return more often and bring other people with them 

8: quicker identification of and resolving of issues within the business

9: better delegation of responsibility which, in turn, enables the leadership team to work on the business rather than managing crisis within it 

10: a highly positive working environment in which people love their work and see issues as an opportunity (for improvement) waiting to be found.