Do your employees help each other like this ?  Do they take pride in helping others in different business areas ?  Are they motivated by seeing others succeed ?

Hire people who care.  Hire people who want to see others succeed.  I’ll tell you what, the player with the #2 on his jersey will show those same caring traits as an adult as he does in this video.  And if you had a team filled with people like him, imagine how much faster your company would grow.

Hire people with the behavioral traits you want…

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture and Leadership at 100MPH.

“What’s the most important thing to do to grow my business?”

This is the question I am probably asked the most. The answer I want to give is long. In fact, it’s so long, it became entire book (it’s called Double Double, if you were wondering).

But my short answer is simple. To grow your business, you have to develop a world-­‐class culture. A commitment to building an awesome culture is also a commitment to making all aspects of your business better.

Think about it, you need top notch employees to build a successful company. To borrow a cliché from one of my favorite movies; if you build it, they will come. You’ll never recruit the kind of people you want if your company’s culture is stodgy or too rigid. Young, ambitious types feverishly avoid this kind of environment and you’ll end up with average applicants just looking for a paycheck.

But build a culture that nourishes and inspires, and entrepreneurial applicants will flock to you. Who wouldn’t want to work in an environment that encourages everyone to work their best?

A lot of companies shy away from building a truly great culture. They think it’s either too expensive or not important enough. Those companies are what I like to call ‘doomed’. Truly great enterprises look at money spent on benefits and perks as investments in their people and can expect it to be paid back tenfold.

Look at Google, one of the biggest and most successful companies on the planet. Their offices are bright, colorful and packed with nap pods, pinball machines and similar paraphernalia. Now is Google staffed by slackers and goof offs? Of course not. In fact it basically has its pick of the top candidates in any field any time it hires.

Some argue its high compensation and stock options do a lot of recruiting for Google, but I retort that its rich culture has attracted the kind of talent that allows it to offer such rich packages. Forget the chicken or the egg, focus on a nice, comfortable roost.

It isn’t just video games or funky furniture that create your culture. Things like vacation time, how you encourage ideas or even what you stock in the fridge go far in fostering an environment of success. In other words, there is no blueprint for how to create a winning culture. Companies that get this, ‘get it’. Emulate them and you’ll see your business take off.

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture

In the past, I’ve not been shy about my disdain for private offices. I’m a fan of open office environments, and while I was at 1-­800-­GOT-­JUNK?, we lived by it. No one had private offices. In fact, I often sat at desks in other business areas just to keep the pulse.

I have also always worked hard to ensure that silos don’t get created inside a company. “Cross Pollinating” can prove to be more successful than imagined.

The most obvious and immediate change is a big bump in company morale. Everyone’s social circles expand and department-­‐specific cliques disappear. Team relationships continue to be fostered in the day-­‐to-­‐day collaboration, but suddenly when business areas are working together, and walls are taken down both physically and metaphorically, you see members of the IT team eating lunch with HR staffers and sales guys reminiscing with folks from operations about their weekend hijinks. Human resource gurus spend their careers trying to foster that kind of team spirit, and it can be done by moving a few desks, and ensuring teams work together to select key projects to work on, and in working on them as well.

Another unexpected by-­‐product of cross-­‐pollination is a major improvement in how the business parts work together. Without silos, stakeholders from different departments develop a much better idea how other divisions function. Fresh sets of eyes and different backgrounds bring new solutions and better ways of doing things. Its remarkable.

In one instance, I witnessed a senior employee from sales was sitting amidst compliance and operations people. Through the regular office chitchat that surrounded him, he began to hear of repeated instances of waste we’d never even considered. He reported it up the chain and steps were taken to remedy it. That’s the kind of intel businesses need to stay solvent. It’s also the kind they pay consultants top dollar to unearth.

Some employees might pine over the plethora of knickknacks and photos they use to create a sense of home at their desk. This mobility doesn’t preclude them from personalizing their spaces, it only means they have to cut back a bit on the teddy bears or pictures of their cats.

Office managers might balk at the logistics of a rotating seating chart. But we are in an age where the entire contents of an old school office can fit inside a laptop the size of a legal envelope; there is no real need for rigid floor plans. Office workers are as mobile as ever, and the benefits of untethering and mixing them are great. Add that to the benefits of teams working on projects to drive the company goals & profitability as well, and the silos will fall.

I cover a lot more on culture here but only click if you’re keen to turn your company into a magnet for great employees.

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

Rule Number Six.  Works every time.  It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, what country or state you live in, etc.  If it resonates with you, please share it, but first read on…

Ronald Reagan & Mikhail Gorbachev were having an all day meeting discussing affairs of state.  Suddenly an aide burst in, shouting and stamping and banging his fist.  Gorbachev quietly said, “David, remember Rule Number Six.”  David was instantly restored to complete calm, apologized for the interruption, and left the room.  They resumed their discussion.  Several minutes later, another person ran in, shouting and stamping.  Again Gorbachev said, “Please remember Rule Number Six.”  They calmed down immediately, apologized, and left the room.

Reagan then piped up and asked the simple question “I’ve seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this.  What is this Rule Number Six?”  Gorbachev laughed and said, “Ahh – Rule Number Six – it’s simple ‘Don’t take yourself so fucking darn seriously.’”  After a moment of pondering, the Regan said , “What, are the first five rules?”Gorbachev smiling said, “There aren’t any.”

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

Even at the employee recruiting stage, your company’s Painted Picture helps ensure alignment.

Have your potential employees read your Painted Picture before their first interview so they’ll know if the job/culture will feel right to them.  Doing this ideally weeds out unqualified candidates.

One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. You don’t want an employee that doesn’t want to make your Painted Picture a reality—not only will they be a drain, but they’ll bring others down, too.

How do you ensure that you don’t hire someone like that? I tell the CEOs that I coach to set up an email auto-reply so that all candidates sending their resumes to your company via email instantly get a response that says, “Thanks for applying to work for us.  Please read the attached Painted Picture that describes what our company looks and feels like three years out.  If this sounds like the kind of company you’d like to help build, send us an email with the words, ‘please interview me’ in the subject line.”

It’s an awesome system that saves everyone so much time by not interviewing candidates that don’t like what the future has in store for them. It also shines a spotlight on candidates who are paying attention, and take the time to send a reply back following your directions.

Also, have all of your employees and suppliers re-read the Painted Picture every quarter.  When every employee reads it, the process of alignment starts taking place. Every quarter, have each person read the Painted Picture quietly and circle the key words or sentences that resonate with them. Then go around the room have each person read out the areas they like.  It provides alignment for the whole team before the brainstorming process takes place, and can assist in planning and prioritizing future projects.

More great tools for recruiting here…

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

Regardless of your company’s size, both yearly and quarterly retreats are critical to ensure alignment, team building and productive engagement among your leadership team. Yearly retreats should be done in about two days, while quarterly retreats can fit into one day.

Retreats should be done off-site, in an environment where group interaction is feasible. There’s just something that changes when a team is removed from its usual environment, such as the city, and relocated to a cabin or a chalet, away from distractions like bars and restaurants. The goal here is to learn, work, and live together. The more rustic the location, the tighter the bond with the team will be. Retreats are more effective in recharging the group if there’s active rest that everyone can participate in together, like hiking or kayaking (can you tell I’m a West Coaster??)

Once you’ve found a place to engage on a much deeper level, the main work to be done during a retreat is prioritizing yearly or quarterly objectives. It always works best to review the Painted Picture right at the start of the first day. When everyone systematically reads the Painted Picture each quarter, the decision-making just gets a lot tighter, and more focused on highly impactful projects versus the big shiny objectives which can easily distract companies. Allowing two days also produces some serious discussion and debate around projects, and that extra time allows the group to ensure the right projects are chosen.

Get creative in picking a place for a retreat.  Everyone will be more focused/recharged at a Mom and Pop cabin versus the Holiday Inn’s ‘Corporate Retreat Center’.

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

I am writing today to report the untimely death of the private office. This isn’t a time for mourning, it had a good run. For a while there, a private office was looked at as the pinnacle of career success; the carrot that motivated countless company drones as they clutched and crawled up the corporate ladder.

But if you want to build the kind of culture that allows companies to flourish, you need to dig a grave for the private office. Nearly every company that I’ve been a part of or advised as a consultant has adopted an open concept office environment.
At 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, we had three floors of wide-open space. It certainly turned the heads of visitors, but our employees loved it. We saw better communication, better teamwork, better morale and faster learning.

In fact, we were once forced to move into traditional office while a new space was being constructed. At first, staff reveled in their new private offices and the workspace hummed with the quiet of focused work. But slowly, people began to see the shortcomings of these walls. They missed the collaboration, longed for the camaraderie and grew sick of the silence and white noise. After just a few weeks, everyone was in unanimous agreement; private offices sucked and were sucking the buzz out of their jobs.

Private offices throw up physical walls between team members. A conversation that could take seconds in an open-concept environment gets needlessly stretched into minutes by walls and doors. It might sound like a minor inconvenience, but multiply that inconvenience by dozens per day, per year and the waste is staggering.

Of course, it isn’t just physical walls they erect, either—the metaphoric barriers private offices create are undeniable. The lowly cubicle dwellers will inevitably feel resentment toward the office crowd. And all the jockeying, scheming and positioning they’ll do to get in that corner office is energy much better used towards growing your business.

I admit, getting rid of private offices is a tough sell to some clients. Senior executives cry foul at the loss of privacy. “I deal with sensitive information!” some say. “I make important phone calls” or “What happens when I meet with high level clients?” ask others. “That’s what the boardroom is for”, I retort. Really, what they are saying is “Please don’t take away the office I worked so hard to achieve.”

But almost to a man (or woman) they come back after trying out a few weeks outside their walls and they rave about it. They feel rejuvenated, more connected to their employees, and most importantly, have a much better feel for the direction of their company.

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

Uranus

Give your meeting rooms names. Our offices at Ubarter.com had boardrooms named after the planets.

The boardroom furthest from the CEO’s office was called Pluto (the planet furthest from the sun).  Guests would always chuckle when they were told the meeting would be held in a room called “Neptune.”

If possible, engage all your employees in the naming process. Don’t just slap a name on a boardroom without any employee input. Culture should flow from the inside out, not the other way around. And yes, it always got a huge laugh when someone asked where the CEO Dwayne was, and the reply was ‘he’s in Uranus’.

And put up huge positive sayings in vinyl letters or on canvasses you design. Pick words or sayings that add value and mean something to your staff, not lame, obscure quotes that don’t have any relevance to your team. This might not be possible right away, but as you cultivate real work culture, it’ll be a lot easier to speak the language of your employees.

One example is have a ‘Can You Imagine?’ wall – where employees, customers and suppliers can put up great ideas.  Big, crazy, audacious ideas that provoke thinking. Make sure they align with company values, but be open to Also include goals and core values on the wall, that way no one will ever forget their purpose.

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

If you are building an entrepreneurial company, you need to build an entrepreneurial culture to go with it.

One way to create a culture of entrepreneurship is to treat all the employees as co-owners.  Let them learn all the parts of a company and how it really runs.  Share some of the profits of the company with all employees. Give them the same level or responsibility and accountability that the owner has, too. Everyone will begin to be excited about growth.  Everyone will start to treat the company like they own it.

In 1986, when I was running one of my first companies, I came home from work one day and started to get upset, and my dad said, “What’s wrong?”  And I said, “All of my employees (who were also my friends) are starting to hate me.”  And he said, “Why are they hating you?”  And I said, “Well, they think I’m making too much profit.”  And he said, “Why do they think that?”  And I said, “Well we have these sales targets every month and we go chasing after these revenue goals, and I think they feel that that’s how much money I’m putting in my pocket.”  And he said, “Well don’t you show them your expenses?”  And I said, “No. If I showed them my expenses they’d know how much profit I’m making!”  He said, “Well they think you’re making more than you are.  So show them your expenses as well. Besides you aren’t making any profit yet so what can it hurt?”

I listened to my dad.

Right away, my employees started to see the business differently.  They no longer felt like I was taking advantage of them.  In fact, they were rather nervous that they might be out of jobs if the company didn’t start making more money fast. That impacted profitability and was tied to that cultural aspect of being an entrepreneurial company.

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

• Deliver What You Promise
• Respect The Individual
• Pride In All You Do

Those were the corporate values of College Pro Painters when I worked for them from 1986-1994.  During those years is when I also really learned how to build companies, core values were part of that.

Those core values stuck with me.  They are clear, simple, and impacting.  They were well thought out by the leadership team who brought them to us.  And I remember calling people on them, including myself & my own boss at one time.  They worked.

Those values still work today.  They are ones that I judge business dealings on frequently.  It’s interesting to me that those values ring so true still for me, even though I have my own values for BackPocket COO below – I occasionally judge the business moves of others based on the first core values I learned to live by – College Pros.

Here are mine:

Do What You Love

Be Authentic

Deliver What You Promise

Balance Is Key

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.