What is culture? Why does it matter?

Simply, culture is ‘what we say and what we do’.

Culture becomes, ‘how things are done around here’, ‘what we’re known for’ and ‘how we make decisions’.

Your company’s culture shapes how your business and brand evolve through the work your people do and the micro-decisions they make each day.

Creating a company culture

Culture can be hard to grasp and, therefore, hard to know how to shape.

Creating a company culture is a bit like marketing in that it’s a process of getting clear on what you want to achieve, and then trying things, tracking the results and honing what you’re doing.

It’s never a one-off exercise - it evolves with you and your business.

As culture is a product of what we say and what we do, the key to building a culture you’re proud of is to be intentional about what you say and what you do. This starts with defining your values.

Defining your values

The process of defining your values must go deeper than one person picking out a few keywords in isolation. The more people in your organisation you involve in this process the better.

To uncover your values you’ll want to explore:

why your organisation exists
what and who you stand for
how decisions are currently being made (formally and informally), and
what the business needs to be successful.

You should end up with a series of statements like ‘we give our customers the right advice for their situation even if it means telling them they shouldn’t buy from us’.

These statements can then be grouped into company values, such as ‘integrity’.

Once you’re clear on what your values are, you have shared language and a measure with which you can recognise behaviours that contribute to the culture you want to foster.

You’re also easily able to spot - and call out - unacceptable behaviour by developing statements of what the opposite, unacceptable behaviour looks like for each value.

Putting your values to work

Your values become your ‘right-hand woman’.

By actively applying your values you’ll start to shape your culture.

Draw on them to shape how you engage with your team, design your customer journey, guide your product development, and communicate your brand.

When to start thinking about culture

Start thinking about culture from day one, or as early as possible.

As you add team members, a culture will emerge whether you intend it to or not. It’s better to be intentional about how you want your business to be experienced by others from the outset.

Defining your values and shaping your company culture can be a work in progress. It doesn’t need to be an arduous process, and nothing is set in stone.

As your team and company grows you’ll want to invest more time and energy into shaping and maintaining an organisational culture that attracts and retains talent, delivers business results and loyal customers.

Leaving it to develop by default and not by design is an easily avoidable mistake.

Useful resources

For more on the process of shaping company culture, I’d recommend:

This four-part series by Charlie HR. They generously documented their journey of re-establishing their workplace culture in response to investor feedback that said they ‘weren’t working hard enough’ and
Gustavo Razzetti's Culture Design Canvas - a culture mapping tool used to assess your current culture, and define your future cultural goals.
Alisa Cohn’s, another highly regarded founder coach in the USA shared this article on how to discover and reset your culture as an established organisation.
Noam Wasserman’s, The Founder’s Dilemmas.

How to build a positive company culture

Company culture plays a vital role in every start-up’s success. In fact, establishing the right organisational culture for your business is one of the cornerstones of transitioning from a Founder into a CEO.