Great employees are critical to the success of your growing business. There is no way you can grow your business without the help of employees. As you develop larger business objectives and larger business systems, you will need more and more people. Ideally, they will be highly motivated to make important contributions to your business. You will encounter people with great skills. However, just because a person has exceptional skills or technical ability doesn’t mean that person will make a quality contribution to your business. It takes something more.
Every enterprise has a personality. Sometimes that personality just evolves, but in the truly successful enterprises, the personality was carefully crafted and embedded in the organization. This personality is really a “tool” that the business uses to serve their customers, support growth and foster sustainability. Most of us are concerned about using practices that do not discriminate unfairly and there are also legal requirements in place. However, seeing business personality as “tool” for success makes it more objective. It is the Founders responsibility to integrate this personality into all of the business operations. Therefore, the business personality must be designed at the beginning of business operations. The personality of the business can also be described as the “Business Culture”. It answers the question: What beliefs, behaviors and attitudes are important in this business? How will customers and affiliates describe this business?
Business culture refers to the shared values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and practices that shape how an organization operates and interacts internally (among employees) and externally (with customers, partners, and the community). It encompasses the company’s mission, leadership style, work environment, communication norms, and ethical standards. A strong business culture fosters unity, productivity, and alignment with organizational goals, while a weak or toxic culture can hinder growth and success. For faith-based businesses, business culture often integrates Biblical principles, emphasizing integrity, stewardship, servant leadership, and purpose-driven work. In this post, I will use Principles and Values as interchangeable terms.
“I feel the most important distinction to make here is that company culture is something that is pre-existing in your company’s genetic code; it’s not something that employees bring with them. In fact, a company with just one employee – a company with no employees, if we’re being honest – still has a culture. That sole proprietor? They’re the one with “vision, values, and assumptions.” They don’t wait around for employees to provide such things; instead, they seek out those individuals who they feel would be a good match with their existing vision for the company.” Quote from Willam Craig in ”What Is Company Culture, and How Do You Change It?”
Key take away: Embrace Values for your business that are important to you. Trying to apply Values just because others use them won’t work. They must have intense meaning for you, the Founder(s).
Take time to determine the personal values you are bringing to your business. Adopt new ones if needed, but the important thing is to be totally committed to the values you choose.
Craig Cincotta in “The 8 Values Every Company Should Live By” reported some of the Values characteristic of successful companies. I have added “Simplicity” to the list. All of these are supportive of cultural adaptability which is so important in our volatile times. These values will work no matter what the environment demands.
Problem Solving – Every employee is expected to participate fully in saving any problem that arises. The environment and the changing realities of our customers lead to problems. Effective and efficient problem solving is always needed. In fact, Problem solving often leads to innovation which are critical to the survival of an business.
Ambition – In this business, Ambition is rewarded and everyone feels free to be as ambitious as they want to be. Continuous training and development is an important part of this Value.
Transparency – Everybody is honest and willing to share the whole picture.Transparency is a growing best practice for contemporary businesses. It builds trust among affiliates and customers.
Empathy –Empathy is the essence of team spirit. In other words, all business associates have helpful and understanding attitudes. Not a lot of big egos and ego protection. Shared purpose and goals are the focus.
Adaptability – Ambiguity is a given in business. Workers must be able to handle it in this environment. This takes a particular kind of worker. Everybody can’t do this. Hiring decisions must be made while considering the attitude and behavior of adaptability as a key attribute of the ideal employee.
Accountability –Accountability relates, of course, to transparency. The ability to be truthful and honest about what’s going on and taking rightful ownership.
Focus –Focus promotes task completion and high quality results. This is a great Value for our chaotic and cell phone dominated environment. Being able to focus also takes a special talent.
Integrity – Every worker is expected to practice honesty and stick to well designed and promoted business principles and standards. According to Craig Cincotta, “Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.” I will add what integrity means to your overall business: You have Integrity in systems and operations when everything works together as the Purpose, Values and Vision require.
Simplicity – Simplicity as a value, will help you build a strong and sustainable business because you’ll eliminate everything that you really don’t need by building the habit of making things simple. Your customers will absolutely love it! This is another secret of some of the most successful 21st century enterprises.
Of course there are many other fantastic Values, that will do a great job of building an adaptive Culture. The values presented here are the values that many successful organizations adopt. There are various values or principles that are equally as productive, but these are good ones to focus on at this time since they have shown up in the research and in the analysis of great contemporary cultures. I’m sure we can agree that it would be nice to work in a place where these values were embraced and practiced by everybody! For examples of successful enterprises and their values see: “Five Companies with Core Values that Stand Above the Rest” Element Three
Hiring people that share your business values is not unfair. In fact it is a smart business tool. I hope you can see how important it is to only hire people who share the values or principles you choose for your business. You may be asking, “How do I hire for my values? First, you must ask the right questions to get insight into your applicant’s value system. An example of a situational question could be: “What do you actually do that makes you as good as you are? or “Can you give me a detailed overview of your greatest accomplishment?” I’m sure you can see the value of questions like this. You can learn a lot about a person from the answers you get.
For detailed instructions on building a rich culture for your business and hiring employees with the talent you must have, get my book, “20 Executive Mandates for Kingdom Multimillionaires”. It will give you eternal principles and timeless strategies for building the best 21st century business possible and the bonus will be that people will love to work for you! The book is available here: https://a.co/d/1M0bGhA
