How would you define your company culture? Is it one of trust and integrity? Do your co-workers look forward to coming to work? Do your customers feel well cared for? Is there the impression that senior management truly cares about its co-workers and its customers?
Company culture, as a concept, was something I thought very little about until I had a chance to work with Paul Orfalea at the Kinko’s Organization. Paul understood the power of establishing a positive company culture, and was fanatical about maintaining it. He must have been doing something right, because for 25 years, the company had an annual growth rate of 30%! Employees rarely left, and of his hundreds of partners, he lost only a handful. To learn more about Paul’s theories on company culture, pick up his book entitled “Copy This.”
If you are not defining your company culture, believe me, it is being defined for you. If management is expounding high company values, but is not living them, the belief in the company is being eroded from the inside out. The fact is, the very best companies have the very best company cultures, and they attract and retain the very best people.
(Originally published in the video library of CFO Outsource.com – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JAt5DJSgKs )