Do You Have Just a Business or Do You Have a Real Company? “No Company Culture, No Company.”

Yes, you have employees, customers, revenue and expenses, but do you just have a business or do you have company?  For the first 10 years of our 20-year history, I was just running a business, and although I thought we were a company we were not.  We made the change 10 years ago to develop a real company culture and it has made all the difference. It is with great pleasure that I provide you with 4 quick tips that you can use to do the same thing within your organization.

• FIRE THE PR FIRM: A great company culture comes from the top-down, end of story.  You, your partners and your managers set the tone, so fire the PR firm and figure this one out on your own.  Sit down with a pen and paper, and get really serious about how you want to design or redesign your company culture.  Ask yourself these questions:
  • What do we stand for?
  • What is the personality of our most successful employees and customers?
  • Why would someone want to work for us vs. our competitors?
  • What do we want our employees to tell their families and friends about our organization and where they work?

• GET OUT OF YOUR OFFICE: Harvey Mackay, the great author of How to swim with the sharks without getting eaten alive said it best.  “You have to walk the factory floor daily”.  Your employees need to see you walking around and paying attention.  IMPORTANT: Don’t use your daily walk around the office as a time in which you point out PROBLEMS.  Use this time to only point out SUCCESSES.  You want your employees to start saying…”wow, the big boss just took the time to talk to me and that was an awesome experience.  I’m actually starting to like it here!”

• SCHEDULE A DAILY “SCRUM” MEETING TO KEEP EVERYONE ON THE SAME PAGE

Every working day at CFF, we have a companywide meeting that we call our “scrum”. The phones go to voice mail, the outbound calls stop, and we discuss our results from the previous day and determine what we should expect from each other for today.  Often we play a quick motivational video (2 minute “Grant Rants” on Youtube are great), and the meetings never run more than 10 minutes.  You might say, “It’s impossible for us to do a daily “scrum” but if I told you that sales could double in the next 12 months because of a 10 min. per day meeting, would you find a way to make it happen?  That is exactly what happened at CFF in 2014.  Our annual business went from $50,000,000 to almost $100,000,000 and I believe it has everything to do with our daily scrum.  If you are convinced that you can’t do a companywide meeting, then think about a daily department meeting.  Suggestion…maybe you could attend each one! Remember, culture comes from the top down.

• UNDERSTAND THE FUTURE EMPLOYEE… MILLENIALS.  Defined as born between 1980 and 2000, these 20 somethings are now entering the workforce and they are looking for more than just a job. Jarrod Glandt, host of Young Hustlers on WIT Network suggests the following:  “You need to understand that millennials have all sorts of information at their fingertips and they use it to make career decisions. You don’t need to change your company culture to be kinder more gentle organization as many people think.  However, you do need to define your culture so that you attract millennials WHO WANT THE CULTURE THAT YOU OFFER”  Don’t get caught pushing a false company culture just to attract employees of all shapes and sizes.  If your culture is sales-oriented, push that company culture and you will attract that type of millennial.