Articles | Columbia Conference Center

Creating a Good Business Culture

By Blake DuBose and Mike DuBose

An organization’s culture is the sum of its core beliefs, behaviors, and values. They shape the organization’s ability to create an execution environment of getting things done. Thus, culture tells us a lot about how an organization and its staff think, act, communicate, and make decisions. The right culture generates passion, instills a desire to be the best you can be, creates excitement, and breeds success.

Jim Collins, in his bestseller Good to Great, noted: A culture of discipline is not a principle of business; it is a principle of greatness. An organization can have the best strategy in the world with excellent products and services, but of it does not have the right culture to execute the strategy, it is doomed! Collins recommended employing the right, outstanding people and placing them into the correct jobs that fit their strengths as a first step towards building the right culture.

While each of our four companies is different, we desired for all of our businesses to have a similar culture. We wanted every employee to look forward coming to work each day, to feel like part of a family, and to be involved in our “big picture.” That meant we needed to build a culture that was inviting, positive, and rewarding for everyone.

Our secondary focus was to be on our customers (and vendors) who should see us as colleagues who consistently deliver results. In order to keep their business and our jobs, we knew that we had go the extra mile to keep them very happy. At the same time, we knew that we could have a great reputation like Toyota built over years and lose it quickly.

Our third emphasis was to be on our community. We wanted to expand our vision of making the world a better place. Therefore, we decided we would donate some of our profits to charities; support staff volunteer and charitable efforts; participate in worthy causes like recycling; and give of our time and resources to achieve our purpose of improving lives.

In 2006, we began our venture to build such a culture. We decided that in order to realize our mission, vision, and purpose, while building a positive culture, we would:

maintain high-quality work standards;
build long-term client relationships based on mutual trust and respect;
serve customers with a high degree of reliability while consistently exceeding their expectations;
adhere to high ethical standards;
create a caring and fun work culture that emphasizes optimism, trust, job security, teamwork, creativity, lifelong learning, and openness;
focus mainly on profitable core projects that engage our passion and knowledge, while experimenting with new ventures; and
create a culture that is strategy-minded.

In order to ensure that our culture reflected what employees wanted, we solicited input from everyone through interviews, confidential surveys, consultants, and focus groups. We desired to build ownership and buy-in throughout the organization at all levels. From this extensive input and debate, we created one document for existing staff and potential employees that defined our culture with a desire to:

Maintain good values and ethics, and do the right thing even when no one is looking.
Value humility and discourage attention-getting, arrogant, dominating, rude, know-it-all, or egotistical behavior.
Treat each other in a nice, respectful, and friendly manner (following the Golden Rule).
Make a substantial profit to pay our bills.
Express opinions, ideas, concerns, and thoughts honestly and without any fear in a respectful and friendly way.
Recognize, confront, and offer solutions for problems.
Expand our personal and professional knowledge.
Adhere to Total Quality Management, which means that we identify and dissect problems and their causes, determine how to solve them, and keep them from happening again.
Value and trust staff to deliver what is needed and execute with limited supervision. We do not value micromanagement.
Maintain good communications throughout the organization.
Build close-knit teams that work united toward common goals.
Respect our differences.
Seek feedback and advice from unbiased people within and outside the company.
Weigh options in a timely manner, and then make prompt “win-win” decisions.
Consistently strive to exceed customers’ expectations by actively learning their needs, doing everything we say we are going to do, and never disappointing them. We strive to “underpromise and overdeliver” in everything we do.
Encourage and reward team members who generate ideas, money-saving tactics, profits, and new clients.
Have peers review our work but not create a hierarchy that impedes project completion.
Get things done punctually in an excellent way.
Treat employees fairly and consistently.
Convey our expectations through clear, mutually-agreed-upon job descriptions and encourage staff to candidly discuss expectations with team leaders.
Maintain guidelines that help staff know how to understand how our organization works. At the same time, like Southwest Airlines, we challenge and eliminate any rules that impede progress.
Understand that reasonable amount of stress challenges us to set priorities, establish target dates, and produce high-quality work on time. However, we know that prolonged high levels of stress can impair our health, creativity, relationships, productivity, peace, overall happiness, and even reduce our lifespan. We do not want to work themselves to death for the sake of the company.
Encourage fun throughout the year. We are taking our employees to Italy in October.
Focus on work outlined in our job descriptions, but welcome new ideas and encourage experimentation!
Build a culture where every staff member feels and acts as if they are a company owner and leader.
Know that we are imperfect humans who will make mistakes. But, we see mistakes and failures as gifts and opportunities to learn and grow.

While we will never achieve a culture that consistently achieves all of these objectives, our desire is to create a great family of companies and it will take that culture to propel us there! Building the right culture is like climbing a long set of steep stairs one step at a time. Building a positive culture has not been easy, but it is doable and well worth the effort!

© Copyright 2010 by Blake DuBose and Mike DuBose. All Rights Reserved. You have permission to forward this article to a friend or colleague and to distribute it as part of personal or professional use during the year 2010 in its full content with all credits to the author. However, no part of this article may be altered or published in any other manner without the written consent of the author. If you would like written approval to post this information on an appropriate web site or to publish this information, please contact Katie Beck at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)and explain how the article will be used. We appreciate you honoring our hard work and we try to accommodate any requests in a timely fashion. Shorter versions of some articles are available upon request.

Blake DuBose is a graduate of the Newberry College School of Business and is president of DuBose Web Group.

Mike DuBose has been in business since 1981 and is an instructor with the University of South Carolina graduate school. He is the servant leader and owner of three debt-free corporations, including Columbia Conference Center, Research Associates, and The Evaluation Group. Mike has completed his book The Art of Building a Great Business. For more helpful articles, visit his non-profit Website www.mikedubose.com.