Growing size sometimes ruins a perfectly beautiful corporate culture that has enjoyed intimacy, and suddenly the workplace must cope with the addition of strangers. When companies are small, often the focus is on product development and the small intimate team creates a natural corporate culture built out of intimacy, mutual risk-taking, and the adventure of a new enterprise. How can this corporate culture scale along with the business? Read on to find out!
Bringing in Corporate Values
It is a good idea to begin the purposeful creation of a corporate identification and culture even at the beginning. The culture of a business organization is based on core values that are generated in the hearts of the founders of the company. Right from the beginning, these core values have to be communicated in a formal way so that team members and employees know what they working towards. Once core values have been communicated and established, the organization becomes a living entity. Everyone develops a feeling that they belong to something larger than themselves.
The culture created at the beginning has to become the culture members of your corporate community identify with. While the organization is still formative, at the tender beginning, your team has to begin to speak for it and show their affiliation to it. Once the team members become ambassadors for the corporate identity, new members will join them as your company gets bigger.
Creating a Scalable Corporate Culture
- Make a statement of values part of the company's "mission statement."
- Develop a list of core values right from the beginning.
- Elaborate and discuss the core values to strengthen them.
- Make the values statement unambiguous and specific so they can be met with action.
- Determine the values of your company in a group workshop or meeting of your initial employees so that each member has a stake in the list.
- Identify culture champions who especially embody the culture. Empower this group to keep the culture alive.
- Institutionalize the culture by implanting it in company institutions. Assure that new staff are exposed to the culture through unifying expressions.
- Make the corporate culture part of your hiring criteria to assure a fit of values among new employees.
- Develop traditions and ceremony that express the culture.
What Happens After Founding a Corporate Culture?
Holding up a corporate culture is part of the process of company maintenance. The hard part comes after the initial successes generate their rush. Often the executives who create the company want to back away from the day-to-day bull work of keeping the company alive and vital. It often takes a delegation of authority to a maintenance leader to get the organization humming along in continuity. Among other things, the maintenance leader should be one who is immersed in the corporate culture and can pass these values on and spread them.A company with a weak and un-maintained corporate culture has no belonging. It is not a family-like unit. The corporate culture is the company's "why" statement. It goes beyond the excellence of product. It is the extra sense that each employee is not only working day-to-day but fulfilling a mission.
The corporate culture has to do with the work of the company. It is not just pleasant atmosphere and corporate perks. Often serious, dedicated employees find those things distracting. It's much more important that staff identifies with the organization's heart, what it is doing, and why it is doing these things.
Corporate Culture Should be Regularly Expressed
- Make regular concrete expressions of corporate unity around its values. These expressions could come in the form of celebrations marking particular events and social events involving staff and families.
- Corporate clothing and logos strengthen a sense of identity, especially when the logo express something about company values, not only for consumers but also for the staff themselves.
- Invest in the dignity of staff. Devoted staff are more than just expendable paid labor, but become associates with an investment in the welfare of the organization.
Create a Scalable Corporate Culture With Studio Other
At Studio Other, we believe that maintaining a robust corporate culture helps improve team spirit and the performance of all your employees! Please contact us to learn more.
