An organization's culture must serve its mission. The culture at a high-growth enterprise will be very different than the one in an organization that is satisfied with incremental progress or one in decline. While some companies prioritize making people feel happy at work, the resulting culture cannot support hypergrowth. The right culture is cohesive, consistent, and principled—and it can be a powerful driver of performance.
The following activities will help you develop a culture that aligns with your mission and growth trajectory. You will also come up with a plan to ensure the culture is consistently supported and how you will deal with behavior that threatens it.
CLARIFY YOUR CULTURAL VALUES
Culture can seem abstract, so it can be helpful to pinpoint your key values. At Data Domain, we used this R-E-C-I-P-E:
You are welcome to steal this, customize it, or create your own. To make sure your choice aligns with your mission, use the following space to brainstorm. What are your organization's key cultural values?
Discuss your responses with your leadership team and select the ones that everyone can agree on. There is no strict rule about how many cultural values an organization has. I recommend picking between three and eight to keep things manageable. Write them down here:
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