When should you start establishing your culture?
As early as possible. Often, culture isn’t the first thing that you think about – strategy, customer acquisition and retention, products and services all take priority. But the sooner you can set the key foundation blocks of a culture in place – the mission, the vision, the values – the better, even if you haven’t started to recruit people yet.
Why is it so important?
Each company has its own culture. It should match the strategy of the business, and at the beginning, it should match part of the founder’s personality.
The more enlightened founders realise that culture needs to evolve as the business does and work to create a culture that’s bigger than them –not just based on their own personality or their own values.
You must decide what your business is and what you’re trying to achieve in order to know what kind of culture you need and bring it to life. Getting it wrong can lead to massive confusion; it can lead to hiring the wrong people; it can lead to your staff leaving because there’s a mismatch between your strategy and your culture, and it can hold you back, even if you don’t have a team around you.
How does a good culture translate to business success?
A great culture translates into business success primarily because it creates clarity – for the founder and for anybody who works with them. For example, what business practices, policies, mindset and ways of working are required to get to the desired goal?
It will also allow for the right decisions to be made so that you don’t veer away from the strategy you’ve set. If a decision needs to be made on whether to take a certain type of client, set up a new product range or move into a different market, you can come back to: do we have the right culture to support that? Does that match with our culture? Is that what we want to be doing? Is that how we operate?
If you’re approached by a potential client who doesn’t fundamentally fit with your ways of working or you’re looking to acquire a business where there is a misalignment in values, you can quickly make decisions by answering the question, “Does this fit?”
When should you start establishing your culture?
As early as possible. Often, culture isn’t the first thing that you think about – strategy, customer acquisition and retention, products and services all take priority. But the sooner you can set the key foundation blocks of a culture in place – the mission, the vision, the values – the better, even if you haven’t started to recruit people yet.
Why is it so important?
Each company has its own culture. It should match the strategy of the business, and at the beginning, it should match part of the founder’s personality.
The more enlightened founders realise that culture needs to evolve as the business does and work to create a culture that’s bigger than them –not just based on their own personality or their own values.
You must decide what your business is and what you’re trying to achieve in order to know what kind of culture you need and bring it to life. Getting it wrong can lead to massive confusion; it can lead to hiring the wrong people; it can lead to your staff leaving because there’s a mismatch between your strategy and your culture, and it can hold you back, even if you don’t have a team around you.
How does a good culture translate to business success?
A great culture translates into business success primarily because it creates clarity – for the founder and for anybody who works with them. For example, what business practices, policies, mindset and ways of working are required to get to the desired goal?
It will also allow for the right decisions to be made so that you don’t veer away from the strategy you’ve set. If a decision needs to be made on whether to take a certain type of client, set up a new product range or move into a different market, you can come back to: do we have the right culture to support that? Does that match with our culture? Is that what we want to be doing? Is that how we operate?
If you’re approached by a potential client who doesn’t fundamentally fit with your ways of working or you’re looking to acquire a business where there is a misalignment in values, you can quickly make decisions by answering the question, “Does this fit?”
When should you start establishing your culture?
As early as possible. Often, culture isn’t the first thing that you think about – strategy, customer acquisition and retention, products and services all take priority. But the sooner you can set the key foundation blocks of a culture in place – the mission, the vision, the values – the better, even if you haven’t started to recruit people yet.
Why is it so important?
Each company has its own culture. It should match the strategy of the business, and at the beginning, it should match part of the founder’s personality.
The more enlightened founders realise that culture needs to evolve as the business does and work to create a culture that’s bigger than them –not just based on their own personality or their own values.
You must decide what your business is and what you’re trying to achieve in order to know what kind of culture you need and bring it to life. Getting it wrong can lead to massive confusion; it can lead to hiring the wrong people; it can lead to your staff leaving because there’s a mismatch between your strategy and your culture, and it can hold you back, even if you don’t have a team around you.
How does a good culture translate to business success?
A great culture translates into business success primarily because it creates clarity – for the founder and for anybody who works with them. For example, what business practices, policies, mindset and ways of working are required to get to the desired goal?
It will also allow for the right decisions to be made so that you don’t veer away from the strategy you’ve set. If a decision needs to be made on whether to take a certain type of client, set up a new product range or move into a different market, you can come back to: do we have the right culture to support that? Does that match with our culture? Is that what we want to be doing? Is that how we operate?
If you’re approached by a potential client who doesn’t fundamentally fit with your ways of working or you’re looking to acquire a business where there is a misalignment in values, you can quickly make decisions by answering the question, “Does this fit?”
