What is Company Culture

Adventures in Businessing: Entrepreneurship, Small Business, and a Healthy Dose of Humor

Show Notes:

• [0:00:53] Intro | Timely Topics
  • Previous Episode & Series Recap
• [0:02:36] Bridging the Gap from Uncertainty to Culture
  • The norms and stardards, i.e. the default state of behavior in your organization.
    • When you have these figured out, you can answer the question, "What do I do when I don't know what to do?"
• [0:04:49] "Now we're going to talk about Culture."
  • What is your company culture?
    • It's a BIG umbrella!
    • The textbook definition, the assumed, the implicit and explicit.
    • "Your culture is a combination of who you are, what you value, and how you behave."
  • Creating a great company culture.
  • You don't control all of your company culture.
    • You have leverage and input, but you can't dictate the culture.
    • It's just as much what your team brings to the table.
  • True or False: You can't know what your culture is in the early days, because people make up your culture?
    • There's a weird irony to unpack.
  • Each new hire brings something to your culture.
    • Culture fits & culture adds
    • Diversity
• [0:13:17] The Contradiction/s of Culture?
  • Expand to do more, be more, say more.
  • What's the cultural focus?
  • Sometimes we hang on to the wrong things.
  • It's far to easy to use "culture fit" as a way to discriminate, both consciously and subconsciouslt.
    • Stop it!
• [0:17:16] Examples of Things That Make up Your Culture
  • How do you approach work?
  • What is your stand on work/life balance?
  • How do team members interact with one another?
  • What is your management/leadership philosophy?
  • Challenge: Poll your team.
    • Ask them, "What do you think our culture is?"
  • If you have someone on your team you hope doesn't contribute to your culture...oops, too late, they already have!
• [0:22:31] How Does Your Culture Get Conveyed to a New Hire?
  • Making sure that we convey the culture we know about to other people.
  • Don't be a smoke and mirrors company when it comes to your culture.
  • There's who you are, and who you want to be.
• [0:25:38] Wrap-Up, Takeaways, Parting Words
  • You likely don't have one company culture.
  • Next episode: Purpose...what's yours?
    • Why are we here?
    • Why does it matter?