What’s Your Company Culture: Fun, Smart, Boring, Innovative?

Every company has a culture. When you think about Apple, you think: creative, fun, hip, art, family, and quality. When you think about Microsoft, you think: nerdy, technical, proprietary, monopoly, serious, mathematics. Your company has a culture brewing whether you know it or not. Sadly, most young entrepreneurs never take to time to really think about their company culture; whether it’s positive, negative, in-between, etc.

Take out a sheet of paper and make a list of words that come to mind when you think about your company

Here’s my company culture keyword list:

• Fun
• Determined
• Entrepreneurial
• Freedom to create
• Innovative
• Confidence
• Fair
• Honest
• Ambitious
• Positive

After you’ve compiled your company culture list, take some time to think about what’s really going on at your company – how people are feeling, the flow of work, the level of confidence within your organization, etc.

• Are people determined to succeed no matter what?
• Are people happy and joyful?
• Are my partners holding their weight or slacking off?
• What sort of feedback are we receiving from clients / customers?
• Are my employees working to their abilities or taking naps on the job?
• Am I, the founder, instilling confidence in everyone?
• Is there respect?
• Do people laugh or dead serious all the time?
• Are people being passive aggressive?
• Is there a lot of shouting and yelling?
• Are feelings getting hurt?
• Are we meeting our goals?
• Are we lazy?
• Are we playful?
• Are we nerdy?
• Are we sexist?
• Are we racist?

Once you have you list of company culture keywords and a set of questions about those keywords and how the relate to your company, then spend some time with your entire team evaluating the company culture. Sometimes things are going wrong and you don’t even know why. Maybe those “wrong” things have been engrained in your company culture and have been affecting the entire organization from the start and growing through new employees / partners — enculturation!

“It’s really easy for the culture of a startup to go sideways”

– Marc Andreessen

Understanding your company culture is absolutely essential to success. Figure it out, evaluate it, and make adjustments — add to the good practices and remove the bad. Remember, you’re building an empire and you’ll need a positive company culture to ensure that your company lives on…and on… and on…

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