Culture is making the invisible qualities of your business visible. Choosing the right areas to focus on can cement what you want your business to stand for.
Business culture blends beliefs, values, symbols, and myths that make up the way your business operates. These core beliefs affect the way your business conducts business every day, using standard operating procedures.
5 Core Values to Build Your Business Culture
- Integrity
Are you a trust brand? Is your business known for getting results? If you tell a customer something, do you follow through? Is part of your core principle integrity? If integrity isn’t part of your core value you will not have a business very long. The number one quality of successful people is they have fanatical integrity.
- Competency
Malcom Gladwell ( author of Outliers, The Tipping Point, David and Goliath) has through years of research, demonstrated that to be proficient in your career you need to spend at least 10,000 hours on your craft. Competency is gained by the experience of dealing with the difficult. The easy sale doesn’t increase your ability to negotiate.
- Unity
Share in depth goals, that are common within the organization produces unity. Recognition of your employee’s accomplishments helps to promote unity. Having a no gossip policy produces a positive work place. Sanctioned incompetence reduces overall moral and will lead to an overall decrease in productivity. As a leader incompetence has to be addressed.
- Leader in Your Profession
Working towards being the very best in your profession is a lofty goal. Always be a learner about your profession. Learn what works; learn better ways to apply your trade. Stay up on the latest trends. Become the best technician in your field that you can be. Being active in professional organizations can also move you toward being a leader in your profession.
- Mission and Goals
In Lisa McLeod’s book “Selling With Noble Purpose” she identifies what sets top sales people from average sales people. It is having a greater purpose than just to make money. Making money is important. It’s what makes a business have a long-term place in the market. Ironically, those that have a focus on the why will have a higher level of success and make more. This holds true in business as well.
A clearly communicated business mission with focused goals isn’t something to just hang on the wall. A clear mission statement is why a business is in business.
Question of the week: “What is in your Mission Statement?”
Quote of the Week: “I think there is something more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren’t enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision”. – W. Clement Stone