High Impact Culture Starts Today, and Begins With Us
Posted by heatherrast on May 26th, 2009“A principle isn’t a principle unless it costs you something“.—Bob Goldstein, former P&G Vice President of Advertising
Today is the first day of the work week and as usual we ended the day with our company meeting. There’s only a small number of us, so we can be efficient with the 45 minutes we’ve allotted.
As usual, each team member spent a few minutes touching on the more complex, urgent, or higher-profile tasks facing them this week. Sometimes they relate those tasks to specific goals, be it client service, operations, marketing or sales goals. It’s nice to tie the daily transactions in with the bigger tickets.
I coordinate these meetings and generally steer conversation along. One of my goals for our time together is to review a topic or issue that’s a bit to the left or right of daily production but nonetheless part of the framework of our company. Deeper stuff. Like how sometimes short-term sacrifices have to be made in order to reach long-term success.
The Brand Embodies The Culture
We’re in the process of re-branding the company. We’ve evaluated the marketplace, reviewed the competition, discussed visions and opportunities, determined our value proposition and have crystalized our position, promise, and essence. We’ve created a new brand identity that’s synergistic with our offering, contemporary, and flexible. For these and a number of other reasons, our small company is on the precipice of a great, roaring forward movement that’s very exciting. Now is the time to talk about culture. What it means to each of us as individuals, as a cohesive unit working in synchronicity, and its’ impact on the business and the brand.
So some of today’s “deeper stuff” was focused on strong culture, and the value an environment of shared principles and standards can bring to a growing organization. A few excerpts from my handout:
Culture Equals =
- An integrated set of beliefs, knowledge, rituals, and traditions.
- The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.
- Values that give life to a business.
If we embody our culture and thread it into every customer, prospect, vendor touch point, then we will give all of them reasons to believe our brand promise:
Only Ovation Interactive provides complete digital signage solutions that help businesses build relationships and influence customers’ decisions.
We’re not yet at the point where we can articulate the culture, or even all of our values. Our vision exists but remains a little nebulous (no succinct elevator pitch yet). These facets are all incredibly important, and I’m personally very thrilled to be part of shaping a living, breathing organization in a high-growth industry offering a great product and conscientious value-added support. We have a lot of positives to draw on, and we’ll work through fleshing out those cornerstones together.
