Any small business coach worth their salt will tell you that company culture is a big deal. Company culture is what defines how the personnel within an organization interact with each other and how the team interacts with the world beyond the organization. This includes suppliers, vendors, partners, and your customers.

So when your culture isn’t intentionally shaped and cared for, your company culture can become unhealthy, it can have devastating or even fatal results. Check out these company culture mistakes and see if you’re making any – because you really don’t want to.

You haven’t defined what is important to your organization.

You can’t have any direction in your organization if you have not defined it. All you have is chaos. Or, more commonly referred to as “controlled chaos” I’ve heard that term countless times! Without a strategic plan (I prefer a simplified strategic plan like the Vision/Traction Organizer®) you have no clear-cut goals or purpose for the short or long term. Without clear core values, your company will struggle to find actionable ways to guide or filter its people’s behavior and their decisions. Having and sticking to a core focus, means staying laser focused on what you are actually good at, keeping it in your sweet spot. Without strategic goals, you’re just stumbling around with no specific destination. You might even be successful despite not having your vision crafted, and shared by all. If that describes you, then the good news is, you most likely have A LOT more hidden potential; you could be one of the best!

How to define your organization:

• Define Core Values (Who you are)
• Define Core Focus (What and Why you do it)
• Hold each other accountable (After all… you decided!)

There is no established direction

A business cannot survive without an established direction in place. It is impossible to set goals or develop a company culture. There is no way to establish any guidelines for identifying areas for improvement or for creating any metric to measure success.

Having an established direction, by setting 10 Year, 3 Year and 1-year goals really help; start with these areas:

• Assess and prioritize pain points
• Brainstorm and research culture initiatives
• Find a new specific strategic initiative or processes to improve each quarter

Change is not encouraged

Change is inevitable. The desire for change is what drives inventions and spurs growth. Without change growth cannot happen. Your organization will remain right where it is, never moving forward, while your competition zooms right on by. Without change, you cannot, will not stay ahead of the curve. If you want your company to survive then change has to be part of the plan.

How to embrace change:

• Set the correct context with your people
• Provide initial and ongoing training
• Empower managers AND employees to be change agents

If you are making any of these company culture mistakes in your company, it isn’t too late to turn things around. Step back and take the time to get your head in the game. Being a passive spectator never got anyone to the Super Bowl. It takes discipline, direction, and drive. The thing is, no one can give that to you; it has to come from within.

The Entrepreneurial Operating System can help make this very difficult process much more realistic to accomplish by simply putting everything together in one place, so you have the visibility into all of the different parts of your business. When you go right to the core, and strengthen that, everything else just falls into place!

Bringing your company into sharp focus and defining your company culture are only the first few steps. Knowing what to do next is where most companies fail. Unless you’ve done it before, after much trial and error, most just give up, and live with the culture they have. When you use a proven process leveraging simple, proven business tools like the Accountability Chart® the people analyzer® and scorecards for data measurables will provide you black and white answers that are usually presented in a very gray hue.

You can turn your business from chaotic to cultured in much less time that you think. By working with a professional, and using a proven system, you can strengthen and grow your business. Success isn’t as far away as you might think. How bad do you want it?

For more information about Chris Hallberg and his company Traction Inc. visit www.tractioninc.com. 

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