Culture is Important in all Companies from Startups to Major Enterprises
In this article, we want to focus on how culture is developed.
Culture is the fabric of companies that are weaved throughout the organization’s journey. It is a holistic sense that reflects the people’s state of mind and feelings about the company and guides their motivation and performance. Culture is weaved by leadership throughout the company with the participation of everyone. It is created, nurtured, and developed over time and continuously refreshed with collective experience and learning.
It is very important that culture is established from the beginning of the company and developed throughout its journey. It is more difficult to change a company’s culture later on, and it is normally instigated by failure or change of leadership. This may be necessary, but it is disruptive. Successful companies build teams that collaborate, back each other, and plan succession for the development of people, growth, and efficiency.
They do this by creating a cultural fabric that embodies every aspect of the company and beyond, especially in the competitive, fast-changing world. It creates an environment that inspires people, bonds them with a common purpose, builds trust, and a shared pride in the company.
To achieve this you have to lay the foundational pillars of values, principles, and conduct. These continue to support the company’s culture. To effectively start and develop company cultures there are three connected key factors — Leadership, Trust, and Collaboration.
Leadership
As stated leadership must permeate throughout the company. There is a confidence level to leadership that is assuring. A feeling of “we’ve got this.” And it inspires everyone to do their best, to perform and succeed. Leadership culture leads by example and injects energy and excitement in people to innovate and take ownership to lead and deliver results. Leaders expand their horizons beyond themselves and build relationships that drive open dialogue learning and networking.
Leadership culture promotes transparency and clarity to get everyone on the same page recognizing each other’s responsibilities and ownership to work together efficiently for the benefit of the team. Like every team sport, everyone on the team develops their skills and builds a unique sense of real-time awareness and actions that gives the team a competitive edge.
Leadership must permeate throughout the company
Leadership is to get everyone to do the best they can. To make sure people are getting better and better at what they do, and ultimately it is about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.
Trust
An effective leadership culture continuously builds trust throughout the company and beyond.
Trust is built when people make commitments, take ownership, and deliver on the commitments. This becomes part of the fabric of the company and strengthens the bonds between everyone.
Trust enhances communication between people. They freely share their ideas and information and therefore this leads to unencumbered collaboration. Trust is earned by mutual respect, demonstration of integrity, and ethical behavior.
Trust creates an atmosphere where contributions are acknowledged, rewarded, and celebrated by everyone.
Trust motivates people to seek help to stay the course and eliminate wasted resources.
An effective leadership culture continuously builds trust throughout the company and beyond.
Trust provides a clear understanding of the vision, goals, and deliverables in an open, transparent environment builds the fabric for collaboration.
Collaboration
Collaboration must permeate throughout the company to get efficiency, innovation, and deliver results.
Most leaders do not need to be convinced that collaborative teamwork is an effective way to manage complex tasks in a constantly changing environment. The issue is putting this into practice.
Critical dependencies at all levels within the company need to be monitored and highlighted to eliminate redundancies and blind spots, and to avoid “whoopsies” and the creation of silos.
Collaboration needs clear objectives/purpose, and needs constant communication among all team members.
Collaboration must permeate throughout the company to get efficiency, innovation, and deliver results.
Collaboration is not necessarily meetings. It is an ongoing communication, visibility, and constant adjustment as needed.
Collaboration is something that everyone talks about. How it is implemented varies. For ultimate success, it must be weaved into all aspects of the company’s mission and actions.
At RNOX we encourage teams to begin building a culture from the start, and develop it through their REAL journey and continue its development throughout their journey.
It will be their creation with our guidance as they progress through the REAL program.
They practice the key factors in culture building in all of the steps in the REAL program.
We provide them with tools and feedback to measure and internalize their practices and efficiencies. The teams plan their growth needs and expand based on their cultural practices. Leading by example, the RNOX team strives to prepare the companies to have a culture that they carry throughout their journey.
