Building a winning culture
“Culture trumps strategy every time”
Over the years, I have gained a true appreciation of how critical culture is to success. When I look back on my tenure as CEO of Entrada, I still consider the people I worked with there as my #1 success. This was evidenced by the many Best Places to Work awards we achieved over the years.
In my mind, there are four keys to a great culture:
Core Values
Celebrate Often
Communicate Regularly
Cultivate Employee Growth
Embrace Core Values
Every company should define and articulate 4-6 core values. Many companies, unfortunately, stop there. They must be intentionally reinforced often and incorporated into hiring, team interactions and the operating DNA. At Entrada we gave out a monthly recognition award. The current winner always presented the award to the new recipient and had to give two specific examples of this person exhibiting our core values in action.
Celebrate Often
Things to celebrate are everywhere when you look for them. Individual events such as birthdays, anniversaries, new hires and personal events are important. Big company milestones such as product releases, client go-lives or revenue milestones are other examples. Start every meeting celebrating successes to get energy flowing. A great quick read to get your creative juices flowing here is The Power of Moments, by Chip and Dan Heath.
Two examples of fun things we did at Entrada helped our culture tremendously.
We did a product release every 4-5 months. Being in Nashville (Music City USA), we started naming each release after bands and celebrated them by hanging a framed commemorative album cover on the wall. As meaningful as this was to our teams, the naming contests also contributed to culture and took on a life of their own.
The Company mascot was The Golden Donkey (pictured above). It lived with the employee of the month and was the star of many videos/stories, as well as having its own website and Facebook pages. A future blog will link to some of its adventures.
Communicate Regularly
Everyone wants to feel informed and connected to the greater whole. To do this right takes intentional planning and regular attention.
Cultivate Growth
Employee training is often neglected, especially in young or rapidly growing companies. However, this can be done effectively and cost-efficiently internally. At Entrada, we developed a curriculum called Entrada Academy that everyone attended. It was taught internally and designed around basic skills everyone needed to succeed – speaking/communications, project management, meeting effectiveness, financial skills, project management and other items were emphasized. These sessions also became great cross-departmental team building exercises.