Culture is a hot topic these days – if your young company does not have a culture then it’s not a cool startup right? Well let’s just stop right there. A business culture is not optional – it’s not something that you may or may not have – it is there whether you noticed or not. The question is do you know your culture and are you being intentional about reinforcing it every day?

Let’s look at this from another angle for a minute and consider what a culture is not:

• it is not having a games machine, pool table or table tennis league
• it is not dressing down on a Friday or having a casual dress code
• it is not having flexible working hours or a short week
• it is not painting the walls a bright colour or replacing your walls with glass
• it is not providing breakfast, lunch and dinner in the office
• it is also not installing a beer fridge
• most of all it is not writing values or behaviours on the office wall!

Before I get angry comments let me clarify – a company with a good culture may have many of those things – but they don’t define the culture.

With that out of the way, let’s consider what does make up a company’s culture. As with culture outside the office place it can be described as the way that people behave and communicate – it’s the conventions by which any group agrees to collaborate and probably incorporates shared interests of some sort. So you see, culture exists whether or not we intend it to – without careful consideration it will become the sum of the personalities people you have hired.

A Wall Street trading company may have a culture of wealth aggregation, a charity organisation probably focuses on improving the lives of a segment of society. The culture within your company may reflect the work you do or it may not. Your culture may have a social pub-each-evening focus or your office may be 9 to 5 desk workers – neither of which are defined by your industry or product offering. So if it is such a vague concept that seems to be influenced from every angle then how can it be shaped?

They say that culture comes from the top, and most of the time that is true. Company leaders behave in a certain manner – they exhibit values or behaviours that the rest of the company adopt over time. Those in the business first hire everyone that follows and they probably pick people that share their values. If, however, the team is purposeful about it’s culture – sharing an understanding about what drives them or communicating a set of values then the culture will follow. What you (as a company leader especially) must remember is that you need to live these values and exhibit the culture that you wish to see in the company. Otherwise it’s just another example of leadership delusion or an exercise in futility. Be inspired by other’s successful cultures of course, but make it your own.

Remember that great company culture is worth defending – it could be why many of your team come to work each day.