Culture is a buzzword. Overused but under appreciated. When done right, culture creates meaningful results; when done poorly, it feels fake and inauthentic.
During our culture series, we’re going to talk about Wholestack Solutions culture and more importantly how implementing similar methodologies can help you and your culture succeed.
But let’s start where one should always start – with why.
Why does culture matter? Culture is nothing more than building a community of individuals who believe in similar ideals. Culture is not about creating like-minded thinking – opposing views and different perspectives are to be welcomed and celebrated. Those ideas can often take organizations to new heights!
But ideals are different than ideas. Ideals are how ideas can be safely shared, cultivated and supported. Ideals and culture are the bedding for ideas – and people – to grow.
Building a great culture must be intentional. It’s no different than cultivating soil for a garden. Throwing random seeds and growing material into a garden will yield sporadic, if any, results. So too will haphazardly treating culture.
If you have dig into what’s important to the organization. Yes, making money is certainly the goal of most companies, but how we go about it will be rooted in why we’re doing it. You can indeed create a culture whose only focus is on making money, but don’t be surprised by bridge burning, infighting and a team that is distrusting of one another.
This isn’t a knock on capitalism – organizations should make money for the value they produce. But how do you go about making money? Through cooperation? Collaboration? Learning and development? If so, then you need to build a culture that supports that. If your ‘why’ doesn’t support your ‘how’ you will create a messy organization. One that rows in multiple directions. You may slowly move forward towards your end goal – but it will be harder than you imagined.
And that’s what culture truly supports – getting folks to row in the same direction. When an employee understands the organization’s “why”…they will buy into the ‘how.’
And that’s why culture is important. To unleash the potential of your employees, your teams, your organization and even the customers you serve – you must have a solid culture that defines your why.
At Wholestack Solutions, our goal is simple: To Unleash Potential. And we use our culture of:
Accept, Adapt, Overcome
Radical Transparency
Progress Over Perfection
See Something, Do Something
Meet People Where They Are
Make A Commitment, Keep A Commitment
Share The Knowledge Love
…to accomplish our goal. These philosophies will be the explored through this culture series and we’ll share how they impact our culture and how they may be able to impact yours.
