Is culture the soul of your business?
If you take a ship out on the ocean, it’s too late to change its construction because the conditions call for an ice breaker model. The same analogy can be applied to your business culture – it’s difficult to restructure culture. Understanding cultural impact supports the importance of getting it defined from the outset as it is crucial to business success. Like the ship, riding the waves allows the journey to continue and with business culture, incremental change infuses the desired business culture.
What is your business culture?
Establishing a culture provides a shared system of values and beliefs that interact within the team, its structure, and its systems to produce the ways by which things are accomplished within your environment. Simply, it tells the team how to behave, what to do and where to place priorities in getting the job done. Building a culture starts with the example set by the leader and filters through into the team with everyone participating.
Sometimes as managers or leaders we overlook unacceptable behaviour because “it‘s just this once” and or it is “too difficult to deal with”. All too often that approach then becomes the norm and may become the acceptable behaviour. What then ensues is a sub-culture permeating throughout the business. When we are in touch with ourselves, our inner voice is our soul speaking to us giving guidance. In a business context, the barometer of the soul is the culture endorsed and accepted by the team.
Does your business have a reputation of retaining your team members?
Culture is positively affected in subtle ways such as through respect for people, team satisfaction, tangible benefits of a happy cohesive team, and an opportunity for the team to influence their work environment including healthy open discussions. Conversely culture is impacted negatively by aspects like absenteeism, reduced productivity, and a lack of opportunities for team members to develop thereby creating a high turnover of staff.
Essentially the culture of your business is how you go about doing business with your team – day by day. This translates to the heart of your business – the people who provide the services. Understanding the culture of your business fosters the appropriate recruitment approach to the best candidates that align with these business values and meet the behavioural expectations of a robust recruitment process. Whether you are a business owner or a team member the soul of the business that attracts and retains your team is your culture. How do you rate?
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