Culture is shaped by the trade-offs you make in what you communicate with your team. As a leader, you only have so much time in the day to create a winning atmosphere. The topics you consistently discuss leave a lasting imprint on your organization. Equally important, the topics you don’t discuss also shape your culture—sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. Here are four “dead ends” to avoid when building your culture – with a case study at the end from a company building a winning culture.

1. Too Many Values = No Real Value If you constantly push ten or 15 different values, or push new values every quarter, your message gets watered down. Employees thrive on repetition! They need you to emphasize a clear set of priorities, repeatedly, so they know you mean it—not just preaching the flavor of the day.

• The Wrong Way: Trying to cover everything that comes across your plate, leaving employees unsure of what really matters.
• The Right Way: Focus on a few core messages that will allow your team to make decisions confidently and “in alignment” when they are left to their own devices.

2. Ignoring a Critical Value Can Haunt You A client of mine who runs a very successful 15M business never made safety a leadership-level focus. He left it to department managers. Then, one day, a severe accident happened—forcing him to step in at the highest level. Now, he has committed to making safety a minimum 5% of all his leadership discussions. A small but dramatic change in his leadership communication, with the goal of ingraining safety into his culture. Clearly it is just a start – it’s the follow through that counts.

• The Wrong Way: Assuming an important issue is “handled” by others.
• The Right Way: Proactively integrating risk mitigation into leadership discussions.

3. Constant Correction Lowers Vision If you focus too much on remedial actions, your team’s vision will shrink. When leaders are constantly in correction mode—whether one-on-one or group meetings—employees will never catch the fire! Have you noticed: People look downward when being reprimanded. And when they look down, they can’t see the long-term vision.

• The Wrong Way: Spending too much of your energy fixing problems instead of inspiring progress.
• The Right Way: Correct the largest items, while making space to ignite excitement around the bigger vision.

4. Overemphasizing Financial Profits Financial success is a result, not a culture. Ironically, when a company overly focuses on financial results, it tends to dis-empower its people. Winning teams don’t obsess on numbers alone. They are crystal clear on:

• Their why
• Their process
• The effort needed to win

For example, look at Enron—a company that prioritized financial results above all else. Their team ended up lying, cheating, and breaking the law because of misplaced cultural focus.

• The Wrong Way: Only talking about the outcomes i.e. profits, leading to short-sighted, even unethical behavior.
• The Right Way: Focus on the inputs and habits needed to achieve the results you want.

Case Study: Building a Winning Culture As a business owner, your main job is to articulate your vision and breathe life into it. Chase Mullin (founder, Mullin Landscape in southern Louisiana) mentioned to me last week that it took him years to figure that out, and now it makes growth easier. Another example is Jerry Schill, founder of Schill Grounds Management. As I have gotten to know his team better in prepping for our Summit Growth Summit, I hear many of them talk about “Winning.” This is clearly one of their core values, which stems from the founders early years competing in sports. But when I look deeper into Schill, it’s eye-opening what they repeatedly talk about and do:

• Developing processes to give customers an extraordinary experience
• Hiring smart, likable people
• Empowering middle management to allow for lean management
• Teaching financial literacy at every level—down to the front line

For an inside look at how Schill Grounds Management builds its winning culture, Join us at our Summer Growth Summit. We will spend a day with their managers and more time with their executives and leaders. Save $400 when you buy tickets before April 24.

Your Challenge: Choose Wisely What You Talk About

Every company’s culture is unique, it should reflect the owners and leaders personal/professional values. But don’t leave it to chance. To build a winning culture you have to be intentional. What you emphasize grows. What you neglect fades. So choose wisely.

Regards, Jeffrey Scott!