Aug 11
5

Do You Know What You Want Your Culture to Look Like?

Do you know what you want your culture to look like?

I think one of the more important starting points for a company who wants to build a great culture is to understand what you actually want it to look like. It is kind of like painting the picture of your company – if you truly want to achieve what you want, you need to know exactly where you are going and what you will look like before you start to build it.

To accomplish this, one of the exercises I love to do is the “Top 10 Reasons Why I Love to Work Here” list. Think through the following question: What are your employees saying, in 3 years time, when you ask the question “why do you love to work at our company?”

Once you come up with 10 reasons, you now have your “top 10 list”, and more importantly, you now have the vision of what your culture is going to look like.

Years ago we did this at Nurse Next Door, and a few examples of statements that came up were: “it is like family here” and “because we fervently live our core values” and “because they let our kids come to work.”

And guess what? Within 3 years we were actually living those statements, and our culture resembled our list (We actually had a schedulers’ son sleep in the Nurse Next Door office from 5 am to school time every morning for over two years)

An example of a company that does this really well is “The Physio Company” from Australia. Founded by Tristan White (an MIT EMP’er), he has built a company into one of Australia’s Top 50 companies to work for and what I would describe as a “hard core values” company)

They have developed a “Top 57 reasons to work at the Physio Company” list. Some of my favorites include:

1	Our Vision: To improve seniors health care forever
3	Recognized as one of Australia’s Top 50 places to work in 2009
10	Help oldies stay mobile, safe & happy everyday – improving lives is what we do!
14	We’ve won HEAPS of awards for our great people and excellent customer service
17	We’re a fast growth entrepreneurial company on its journey to greatness
19	We only select great people or we don’t hire at all
57	Flexible work hours for mums and dads

And if you are at the stage like The Physio Company, or Nurse Next Door, where you do have a great culture, and you can actually create a real list of “The Top 10 or Top 57 Reasons Why We Love Working Here”, what a great recruiting tool!

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