Throughout my career as an ad writer, I’ve noticed that the easiest companies to skyrocket are those with a healthy and happy corporate culture.
You know it’s a great company when everyone wants to get a job there and no one wants to leave.
Let’s talk about culture.
Definition One:
In biology, a culture is a cultivation (usually bacteria, germs, or tissue cells) in an environment of nutrients.
Culture: a cultivation in an environment of nutrients.
Do you want to create a culture?
Step One: Environment
Step Two: Nutrients
Definition Two:
When we describe a person as “cultured,” we’re saying they are conversant in the arts.
In the words of Phil Johnson, “You acquire an education by study, hard work and persistence. But you absorb culture by viewing great art, listening to great music and reading great books.”
The arts are nutrients for the heart. To become “cultured” in the arts is to know how to make peoplefeel differently.
Definition Three:
When our friend Susan Ryan came home after 7 years of doing business in a third-world country, she said, “It’s hard to develop a strategy that will overcome hundreds of years of enculturation. Culture eats strategy for lunch.”
A strategy is made of goals, objectives, and activities.
A culture is made of values, practices, and behaviors.
Princess Pennie says strategy is today’s “do list”
and culture is all the yesterdays that made you who you are.
Definition Four:
The culture of a business is expressed as esprit de corp: the spirit of the group.
Culture: a cultivation in an environment of nutrients.
Business Culture: a cultivation of practices and behaviors in an environment of values.
If you don’t have strong values, you won’t have a strong culture.
If you don’t reward and celebrate employee practices and behaviors, you’re just mouthing platitudes and clichés. (Commonly known as mission statements and corporate policies.)
Anyone can copy your strategy, but no one can copy your culture.
Branding is nothing more than corporate culture made known.
Good advertising promises your customer a specific experience.
It is then up to your people to deliver that experience.
Shout it from the housetops.
Roy H. Williams