A dear friend asked me today while we were working out, “do you work on culture in your company”?
My initial thought was, “with every breath”!
I work on it with every thought, with every conversation, with every decision.
Like "harmony", to me the concept of culture is real not only at the office, but with our families as well...
To be honest, I almost never call a meeting on “Culture”.
I did have an agenda item to address and discuss our core values during our Executive and Leadership meetings earlier this year.
And, a few years ago, during an Executive meeting, we dealt with the question, “Why does our company exist?”
EVERYTHING I do has to do with culture, because culture is CREATED by everything we do.
That is the part that so many leaders don’t understand…. Culture is so amorphous.
Many people either;
{C}a) feel silly talking about touchy feeling things in the work place, or
{C}b) don’t know where to start the conversation or how to have it, or
{C}c) underestimate the power, opportunity, and value that a healthy culture brings to the company and the people in it!
I think culture is critically important and one of the MOST important aspects of business and companies and organizations and teams…
But, I don’t talk about it in theory… because theory is theoretical by nature ;-)
I like to talk about culture in its application… because application is applicable by nature ;-)
I want our values, our beliefs, our priorities, our strategy to be lived so that it can be understood, so that it can be embraced, so that it can be valued.
I don’t want to talk about the theory of culture because it leads to arguments and discussions about hypothetical situations and virtual problems…
Business is FULL of real situations and DIFFICULT problems… so my feeling is… lets use THOSE!!!
In every conversation… when we set strategy, when we set policy, when we allow exceptions, when we say hello, when we set priorities, when we drop the ball, when we disagree, when we argue, when we resolve, when we accept, when we reject, when we question, when we answer… and ultimately even when we THINK… we are shaping our culture.
Culture is the intangible and unreachable collective of all of our actions.
Culture is our company’s “sense of life”, the aggregate of all of our decisions that shows up in every moment.
Culture is the result of all that we do…
I believe that every company deserves to have a deliberate culture, despite the fact that almost always we create a culture by default.
Much like a great marketing message… culture is accomplished through consistency, through repeatability, through clarity.
It takes every breath.
It is crazy hard to destroy culture in a single breath, but you can damage it, you can damage it seriously…
Is a great culture my goal? Is a great culture what I am trying to build at EMG and NVT?
Yes and No…
I want to help build a company that adds great value.
I want to help build a company that has great integrity.
I want to help build a company that deeply values its employees and clients.
I want to help build a company that is transparent and trusted.
I want to help build a company that makes people happy to wake up in the morning.
I want to help build a company that learns every day and strives to be better every tomorrow.
I want to help build a company that is profitable, because nothing is possible without it.
I want to build a company that helps everyone who is a part of it lead more meaningful and happier lives.
And, in doing that… in building that company… it will have onto itself a culture, a personality, a sense of being that is unique…
Whether or not I choose to work on culture…
With every breath and every action that every member of our company takes and makes… our culture is defined…
And, I believe that being aware of it, embracing it, & being deliberate with it allows us the possibility of influencing it, shaping it, and watching it invisibly and magically assist us, steer us and drive us in the direction of our strategy and our dreams…
Yours in harmony,
Nestor