Believe it or not, coatings contracts has been won and lost based on whether or not the customer “had a good feeling” about your business and its employees—particularly in the beginning during the kick-the-tires stage. When everything else is equal, and geographic location is of little consequence, the gut feeling your company generates will motivate customers to choose, rather quickly, whether to do business with you or not. In fact, some businesses have experienced situations where their bid proposals were clearly superior to the competition yet they did not win the business because, as they found out later, “something didn’t feel right” to the review team. Of course the only way to know why you didn’t win a contract is to ask, but the point is this: listening to the feelings and hunches about the culture your business projects is more important than you might suspect but seldom verbalized. I think we need to talk.
Why you must invest in culture
The inspiration for this post occurred to me at a luncheon last week. I was reminded of the tale of two bricklayers working at a construction site that was just getting started. The first bricklayer was asked, “what are you building?” and he replied, “I’m setting bricks for this perimeter wall.” Then the second bricklayer, just around the corner, was asked the same question, “what are you doing?” But he replied enthusiastically, “I’m building a cathedral!”
Think about how different these responses sound. Consider these questions:
- Which bricklayer was more invested in what he is doing?
- Which one personifies the kind of employee you would like to have working for you? The first bricklayer, who is doing exactly the job he was hired to do, or the second bricklayer, who showed passion for his work and a strong connection to its purpose?
- Which one would you hire if you needed a brick building erected?
- Which masonry firm would you hire if the two men represented different companies?
- What if you were the review team? What would be the combined affect (the feeling, if you will) projected by the company they work for?
Can you imagine the difference in feeling if you interviewed two masonry companies: one offered a kindred, likable team that wants to build your cathedral; the other a union of bricklayers who exhibit various levels of passion and connection to you, their employer, and your project?
Your culture and your brand: two sides of the same coin
Your company’s culture is becoming more and more important to your customers, your employees and your company’s future. [This is such a big topic that I will come back to it in a near future post to address the employee side of this argument.]
Culture is an intangible much like your brand’s promise—you cannot touch it, and it’s difficult to measure, but it’s very real. Like your brand, a great culture is an acquired, developed asset that pays big dividends in many ways. Culture consists of learned ways of acting, feeling and thinking (rather than biologically determined ways ingrained from birth). Your specific kind of culture is something an employee will gain from you—it is not something he brings with himself. Eating, for example, is a living need. But what people eat, how they prepare their food and how much they might value variety will differ from one culture to the next. Cultures, like brands, should be created with strategic intent. The more effective ones have been consciously created and nurtured from a strong, singular sense of mission, vision and values that have been practiced and learned over time.
Though social scientists do not use the word “brand” they describe culture the same way—a “whole way of life.” Your company’s culture emerges from of all the ideas, all the stuff, and all the ways of doing the things that it does. Employees begin to absorb the culture of the company as soon as they join. But here’s the catch: if they are not trained or indoctrinated in a prescribed way—they will find their own way, naturally, like water that flows in the path of least resistance. Then, years later, a kind of culture eventually emerges but it may not be one that people of other cultures (potential customers) feel good about. Therefore the unintentional culture that surfaces may not be one that you can sustain your business with.
Operations matter. So does making a good product and having good customer service. But without a winning culture to drive it all forward, your success could be short lived.
INSIGHT:
What began sounding like a lot more work (to get culture) just got easier because the effort clearly overlaps with your investment in branding. They both begin with clarity of mission, vision and values and end with a promise. So, once you can get the culture right, most of the other stuff: the customer service; the passionate employees; the profitable output; and happy customers will happen naturally on their own.
That brings me back to ACCESSA’s simple promise: “Improving your product, improving your bottom line.”
Stay tuned for more on this subject. Share with me your specific observations. Comments are always welcome.
Photo by Kaiylin M