As a business owner, you're the chief architect of your company's culture.
And it's probably the thing you've put the least amount of time and energy into developing.
For many owners I know, culture isn't one of their top priorities despite the fact that "people issues" take up a considerable amount of their time.
Thankfully, it's never too early and you're never too small to be purposeful about designing your company's culture.
Even small teams and solopreneurs have challenges because humans are humans.
If we agree that culture is the combination of shared beliefs and behaviors about how owners, managers, and employees interact and make decisions, then we can understand how important culture is to the success of our company.
And we can get intentional about
- WHAT our purpose and values are
- WHO shares a commitment to our purpose and alignment with our beliefs
- HOW we want those people to work together
- WHAT we’re going to do to create an environment where everyone can do their best as individual performers and as a team
It all starts with you.
1. Start with the core: get super clear about your purpose and make sure anyone working with you knows
- Why you exist
- Who you serve and how you serve them
- Your vision for the impact your business will have in the world
- The values you think are most important when making business decisions and choosing how to act
- What it looks like when your living your values
Rachel D'Souza Siebert normalized bringing her kids to work meetings and events from the very beginning. As her team grew, so did this practice. If you do work with Gladiator Consulting as a client, employee or contractor, don’t be surprised if some small co-workers join your next Zoom call.
2. Be clear about who does what and how: explicitly communicate (in writing and through direct conversation, training and coaching)
- Your expectations regarding core competencies, responsibilities and expectations for specific jobs and roles in your company
- Document your processes so everyone can follow standard operating procedures
- Use tools like peer agreements and team charters to make working norms explicit and clear
- Overshare. Don't hoard information or share on a need to know basis.
Stephanie Haenchen has a mix of seasoned and young professionals on her team. Her focus has been on clearly communicating the core competencies everyone needs to demonstrate and providing coaching, technology and documented SOPs to support them in working optimally with each other and on behalf of Pace Marketing’s clients.
3. Get to know your people: In addition to technical skills, professional experience, and unique talents, employees and contractors have hopes and dreams, as well as wounds, fears, and basic emotional needs.
- Find out what people care about, what drives them, and what inspires them
- Understand what they want to learn, how they learn best, and the ways they want to grow
- Ask how people want to receive feedback and be recognized for their contributions and accomplishments
Amy Mills is heiress to the legendary 17th Street Barbecue legacy. With two restaurants, a factory, catering, mail order, and new cafe operations to lead, she knows her company is only as strong as her team. When we started working together one of the many things we did was facilitate a conversation with her leadership team about vision and values. They set ambitious 5-year goals that have helped energize the team after a very hard two years dealing with COVID’s impact on the business.
4. Make the "people piece" a priority: Managing people can't be an ancillary activity. People are the heart of your business and need to be treated accordingly.
- Set annual goals for everyone on your team - including yourself
- Schedule regular meetings (bi-monthly or quarterly) to have 1:1s with each person on your team
- Have weekly team meetings - with agendas - to maintain clarity and open lines of communication
- Use communication tools like Slack and/or project management tools like Asana to improve work flow and communication
- Expect to spend the majority of your time providing the people on your team with the guidance, coaching, training, and support they need to perform at their best so your company can grow and be sustainably profitable
Having doubled the size of Roanoke Construction, Kevin Buchek and Mike Duffy found themselves with exponentially more people needing their time and attention. This year has been about investing in their infrastructure through a combination of a mission/vision/values reset, process and procedure documentation, improved use of technology, core competencies alignment, and intentional career pathing to empower their team to work toward common goals as efficiently and collaboratively as possible.
