Subscribe to FeedGot Culture?
by Jeff RosenbergEvery business has a culture. But not every business knows what their culture is or how they got it. That’s a mistake no business owner should ever let happen. Because your business culture defines so much of how your business works, or doesn’t work.
Merriam-Webster defines culture: “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization.” When you start a business, culture’s pretty easy — it’s you. But as you grow and add employees, if you don’t make a conscious decision to communicate your definition of culture to every employee, and infuse it throughout the organization, you still get a culture. Just not the culture you envisioned — kind of like thinking you’re going to see Atonement and instead ending up in the theatre showing Meet the Spartans. You can try to convince yourself that you’re watching an Academy Award-nominated period piece. But your employees, clients, vendors, subcontractors, etc. are watching some bizarre comedy where everybody keeps getting pushed down a giant sinkhole.
Your business culture — defined and constructed, or just an organic mess — determines how you respond to clients, manage vendors and subcontractors, and work with partners. Our business culture frankly grows out of my own at-times obsessive and hyper personality. We respond quickly to clients. We view the most important thing as delivering good work on time. We are always, always going after perfection. We don’t care how smart you think we are (or not) — we care that you know you can count us to deliver.
All of this defines how well — or not well — we work with partners and subcontractors, for example. Some are a perfect cultural fit for us. Others are not. Which ones do you think we bring business back to?
The trackback URL for this entry is
http://www.blogenberg.com/2008/02/19/got-culture/trackback/