Do you TRULY understand the culture of your business?

When I started working full time after university the concept of a business having a “culture” was not really discussed in that way as I recall – it was just a good place or a bad place to work!  How things have changed!

I really became exposed, and subsequently “obsessed”, with business culture when I started with the Ray White group in 2006.  Our CEO at the time, Brian White, was also obsessed with culture and I found it fascinating and exciting that as a leader I could create a unique business culture.  I think it was this concept that motivated me to really want to buy a small business and work on creating my own culture and really grow and mould the business and team to my vision.

Although many business owners and leaders are challenged by leading and managing a team, when it all comes together and it’s working well and you have created a positive and productive culture, it is like a well conducted orchestra, and you my friend are the conductor!

However, when it all goes wrong and staff are at each other, unmotivated and unhappy - you have a disaster on your hands.  So, how do you assess your current culture and how to you either change your culture or manoeuvre it in the direction you want?

When we meet with business owners and leaders, and ask them about their culture, it still surprises us how often what they tell us, and what staff tell us, is quite different….and usually not in a good way.  And let’s face it – if you’re not really in tune with what your staff are saying about your culture you have a problem on your hands either now, or in the near future!   If staff do not enjoy the environment they work in, they are more likely to:

• Resign
• Lack care for their work
• Cause issues within the team
• Take sick leave
• Become unproductive and complacent

Clearly none of this is good for you or your business!

So, what do we suggest if you want to TRULY understand YOUR current culture and ensure it’s on track, or start to get it on track?  You need to look at surveying your team.  How do they describe your culture, what ideas do they have for improvement?

You can look to do this yourself, or you can hire an expert to do this with and for you.

This is where we come if in!  Elaine and I are one of the few businesses in Australia accredited in CultureTalk Archetype Assessments and the framework that is associated with this. The opportunities are endless in terms of using it to work with business and organisations in respect to culture as well as leadership and team development. It is a really positive framework and EVERY business owner we have shown it to has been excited by it and is now working with us to look at implementing it into their business in the year ahead.  In the US the framework has been used extremely successfully to work with a Towns (similar to Councils), as well as large organisations such as Coke and Turner Entertainment (now Warner Media) and of course many smaller organisations. 

There are two different ways you can work with the CultureTalk Archetype Framework.  The first is the individual assessments and the second is the organisational assessments. 

In this scenario the organisational assessments and framework would be used to assess the culture (individual staff complete a detailed survey), validate the culture with the team and management and then look at activating a plan to improve, change or manoeuvre the culture in the direction that the business owner or organisational leader wishes to see it head.   Essentially the organisational assessment and frame work can be used in the following ways:

• Truly diving deep and understanding a businesses culture.  This includes the culture as a whole and subcultures that may exist within different departments
• Branding the organisation in terms of how to "promote" it to customers and potential staff. 
• Merging two different organisations or departments
• Changing the culture of an organisation or changing a subculture.  This could be due to a "negative" culture or because an organisation wants to head in a different direction and therefore may need to be more creative or more process driven or more social etc... again the ways to use it are endless.
• Improving leadership and the relationships between leadership teams (this crosses over a bit with individual assessments)
• Recruitment - by being able to really articulate the culture you can promote roles and better attract the right fit for your organisation. 
• Team Building - because the whole process is quite a positive one it does actually improve communication and understanding between staff.  Depending upon an organisations objectives we can dial up or down the team building aspect. 

So, if you are interested in finding out more about the CultureTalk Archetype Leadership framework you can download some more information at the bottom of this web page  – or feel free to call or email us and we’d be happy to run you through the process and what it is  you are looking to achieve with your business culture!