Your Culture is Your Brand
It takes years for culture to be defined and established in a business. And it is always developing and evolving. It’s like bodybuilding – you don’t just lift weights once and expect a transformation. It requires regular, consistent work, stepping up the level of commitment as you grow until the new practices and behaviours are less conscious and become natural.
Describing your culture illustrates your company’s brand. ‘We’re fun, committed, value-driven and collaborative.’ That’s how people see your business.
If you can’t describe your company’s culture, it implies to anyone watching or listening that the foundations are missing. And that suggests a level of chaos in your business. With the current global talent scarcity, your board and investors will want to see that you have a robust people and culture infrastructure to mitigate any risk of exposure.
Culture is your company’s internal compass
Culture is how you behave. It’s behaviours you actively promote and those you accept. It’s about ways of working and how you interact with your team. It underlies communication, connection, diversity, leadership, teamwork, support, collaboration, action, results, drive, stability and expectations.
You might not yet know what culture you want for your business. Working with your team to set an aspiration for your culture must be a priority.
Particular industries (agritech, climate, AI, edtech, big data) automatically create a core culture. It is influenced by the people whose values align with working in that industry.
What’s important to you and why you created this business influence the culture. Your internal compass guides you to do what you do and how you do it. Similarly, your company’s culture is its internal compass. As Ben Horowitz says in his book, What You Do is Who You Are.
[i] Horowitz, Ben. 2019. What You Do is Who You Are: How to create your business culture. New York: HarperBusiness.]
If you don’t want a fun environment with chatty, sociable employees, then don’t try to make it part of your culture. Many skilled employees seek an environment where they can put on their headphones and focus on deep, analytical work. If this is the case for your business, share it. That way you will attract the behaviours you need, rather than trying to conform to some perceived recruitment expectation.
Be realistic. Know that what’s meaningful to you may not be felt in the same way by your team. Of course, many people you hire will have similar values and purpose, but this job is often just a means to an end. You can, of course, influence their engagement.
Your role as the founder strongly influences and shapes the culture. How you behave, communicate, connect and lead sets the standard for everyone. Developing culture is your opportunity to create the environment and relationships you need to scale the business you want.
If you’re ready to build the culture that will help your business scale successfully, I’d love to chat and see how I can help.
