Company Culture: Why You Should Run Your Company Based On Your Values?

Throughout my career, I’ve been in all types of organizations in the United States Air Force. I’ve worked for inspirational leaders that set the example and knew how to effectively communicate with their subordinates. I’ve also worked for a boss that was selfish, negligent and never seemed to take responsibilities for his actions.

While sitting at my desk today, I was thinking about the best ways to run a company and the most important key factor to create an organization that everyone loves. My thoughts led me to think back to my early days in the United States Air Forces. I’ve had good times and bad times. However, I’ve realized that the best unit or company I’ve worked for was enjoyable because of the great company culture.

Let’s define the Company Culture……

The Company Culture is the beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company’s employee and management interact with each other and customers. Often, the company culture develops internally over time from the habits or traits of the people in the company. What was so amazing about my personal experience was that the company culture was instilled into the employees from my boss, which he based the unit values from his own personal values.

What Not to Do

In my early years in the military, I worked for a boss that never put his troops first. To him, the only thing that mattered was completing the mission and by any means necessary. This was fine and dandy. However, to have a successful mission, you need to have great, hard working and motivated people to carry out the mission. This is important if you want to establish the end result as desired. In my eyes, we were all great and hardworking people, but we lacked the motivation because we felt leadership didn’t care or appreciate the work we did. His leadership killed the morale and the company culture was horrible.

Did you think we went the extra mile? Absolutely not. We just did the minimum and produced good results when we could’ve been producing great results. Eventually, we started losing our best workers because they didn’t want to work for such a boss.

Take Away:

The leader is the face of a business. The leader is the brain, the heartbeat and the soul of the organization. Given these facts, it’s only fair to make the assumption that the leader sets the tone and culture in the organization.

It’s important that you, the leader create a company culture that reflects your values and beliefs. As the leader, your actions and decisions can and will affect the company progress, but most importantly, will also affect each employee that is working for you. Developing a core structure of values and beliefs is ultimately setting behavior standards that one must follow. If instilled in the employees, the company will benefit from the synergy within the organization. Below are the benefits of running a company based on your beliefs and values:

• Building a company with a positive culture has a high return on investment

• Attract liked-minded people into the organization

• Less employee turnover

• More synergy within the company

Have you ever worked for a company with a horrible company culture? How did you stay motivated at work? What do you feel are some attributes a company should have to make work enjoyable for the employees? Please let a comment on my Facebook, Twitter or leave your comment below.

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