Business Culture, in short, is your business’ identity. It is the visible day-to-day interaction your clients can expect to have when choosing your business. It is crucial that you, your employees, and/or volunteers nail your business culture because it defines whether or not people will want to do business with you, become repeat customers, buy your products, or even refer your business to their friends and family.
But what or who creates this culture? YOU do!!
One of the greatest things about being an entrepreneur is that you get to create. You are not bound to anyone else’s ideas, opinions, operations, or business culture. You get to define and create the culture that best fits YOUR business.
But what goes into creating YOUR business culture?
A few things actually…this post will focus on mission statements, vision statements, core values and goal setting.
A well-defined mission
Your mission statement is exactly that…your company’s mission - it is what your company actually does on a day-to-day basis. Now this is not some long elaborate statement built using fancy words that sound good but at the end of the day it says nothing. Your mission statement should be short, sweet, and specific. People should read your mission statement and understand what you do and how you differ from others in your field.
Take a look at some of these examples:
Target: “To help all families discover the joy of everyday life.”
PBS (Public Broadcasting System): “To create content that educates, informs and inspires.”
Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Vision of the future
Your vision statement is what your business aspires to be. This will look different from your mission statement. Remember, the mission statement is what you are doing now…the vision statement is what you will be doing tomorrow and in the future. Your vision statement should drive appropriate decisions that align with the goals of your business.
Take a look at some of these examples:
Walmart: “Be THE destination for customers to save money, no matter how they want to shop.”
Verizon: “To inspire tomorrow’s creators to use technology to build brighter futures for themselves, their families, and the world.”
Amazon: “To be earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”
Core Values define your business
Mission and vision statements define where you are going, but core values are all about who you are. They are the root beliefs from which your business operates from. It is so important that your employees and/or volunteers understand and embrace your business’ core values because it is the foundation of your operation…your employees/volunteers are direct representatives of those core values which IS the essence of your business.
Core Values will support your vision and shape your business culture. Try to limit your list of core values to five or six.
Take a look at this example:
Walmart Core Values
Service to customer
Respect for the individual
Strive for excellence
Act with integrity
Goal setting brings it all together
Goal setting is how you take your mission, vision and core values and turn them into reality. Clear objectives produce results…so let’s be clear. When setting goals, outline high level objectives that align with your vision statement. These objectives should be specific and measurable.
Take a look at this example:
Rather than aiming to “have the best product ever” consider aiming to “add two new developers.”
So if the objective is to “add two new developers,” then we need to set key results that will bring it to fruition.
That would look something like this:
Attend one hiring fair this quarter
Create one blog post about hiring
Use LinkedIn to reach out to five potential candidates
Did you see what you just did? You just took that broad vision and turned it into actionable steps.
If you found this blog post to be helpful, give it a thumbs up and share with your fellow entrepreneurs/aspiring entrepreneurs.
Looking for business coaching or consulting? Send me an email and request your