I recently spent two weeks quarantined from my family with COVID. It struck me, as I lay there, that I had no idea what was happening in the rest of the house. It was operating without me – good or bad. It made me think about company culture and how it forms, with or without intent.
According to Merriam-Webster.com, culture is a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization. Every organization has one. A planned culture is one where leadership decided what culture they wanted and designed the environment accordingly. If no effort was made to design a culture, one simply formed. The environment became a product of the people, processes, and patterns represented in that workforce.
If you want to see growth in your organization, you need to cultivate, or foster, that growth. Give your organization the nutrients it needs to thrive.
So what is the culture of your organization? Do you see growth in your people? Do they get along? Do you attract top talent in your industry and retain them over time? Are your employees engaged and fulfilled? Do teams work together in harmony or is collaboration difficult and filled with disunity? Is there undue stress in the workplace?
Whether you are just starting out and want to ensure you are designing your culture or you realize that your culture is not what it could be, you’re in luck. It’s never too late to cultivate a healthy organization. And if you do it well, it will become so much a part of your people that it will produce desired results even when you are unable to contribute to it.