Culture has become a real buzz word in the AV industry, and Navigate talks with a lot of companies about culture. But when we talk about culture, what do we mean?
In this week’s video, Brad Malone breaks it all down, “Most of the time, I don’t think people really understand culture. I find it is combination of things. It’s wrapped up in the vision, the mission, the ethics, and the values of the company.”
Why are we here? What’s our strategy? What business are we doing? What’s our client base? Who do we go after? What’s our capability? What’s our capacity? All those questions need to be focused on why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Then you look at values. Values are what we hold to be dear. Do we value quality? Do we finish the job we’re supposed to do, or do we almost finish the job? Do we trust one another? Do we trust each other on quality? Are we predictable? Do we have a brand? When we walk in a room, do people know it’s our room? Worse yet, do you walk in a room and go, “Whoa, that’s their room.”
Then you have ethics. Do we have integrity? Do we have loyalty? What I find, especially in the world today, is that people are somewhat lost. They’re yearning for a place where they can say, “My personal ethics and values fit with the company’s.” When you have that, you have people wanting to come to work. You have a profession and not just a job.
Many of our clients haven’t figured out how to work on this part of their business.
What is the cost of not working on company culture?
I think that the short word, and people will say that I’m blunt, but it’s hypocrisy. We’re saying one thing. We’re rewarding, or worse yet, we’re not saying anything about the other. We say to people, “Follow the process.” Then our most special salesperson doesn’t follow the process. Then we reward our most special salesperson more than anybody else for not following the process.
Then everybody says, “Well, what’s up with that? Why should I do what I’m supposed to do when they’re not doing it?” What happens is you lose your best people, and it sucks the soul out of a company. Once that soul’s gone, I’m going to say pride, professionalism, all those things just go with it.
For more information, watch The Cost of Culture, below:
