What You’re Getting Wrong About Company Culture

Culture has been one of the big corporate buzzwords in recent years, one that’s been embraced by large companies like Google and Amazon, but also the smaller brands that wish to emulate them. And truthfully, culture is something that impacts all of us: Even a business of three people has a culture, whether those people know it or not! Like most buzzwords, then, culture has some merit to it—but also plenty of room for misconception.

You can probably identify some of the biggest myths and misunderstandings about company culture without much help. For example, culture was briefly associated with such superfluous perks as a foosball table in the break room, a notion that’s basically been laughed out of town by now.

Common Errors About Company Culture

But while the foosball table is an easy target, there are other misunderstandings about company culture that might not be so easy to identify. Consider some of these:

“There’s no way to know what kind of culture our employees want.” All too often, executives try to impose culture from the top down, without bothering to consider what kind of cultural aspirations are already planted within the company. Truthfully, there is plenty of research that suggests employees all want basically the same things from work—transparent communication, a sense of ownership, and to feel like they are important to the vision and mission of the company. And if you have any doubts, you can conduct an employee survey of your own.

“We can’t manage culture because we can’t measure it.” Again, simply not true. Annual engagement surveys are perfectly good ways to measure culture and track your progress. Other metrics, like productivity and retention, can also point to cultural improvements.

“It takes years to change a company’s culture.” Not necessarily. While culture is always evolving, there are changes you can make to the way you communicate with your team that will start to have resonance today.

“If we get culture right, all our other problems will go away!” Alas, this isn’t the case. Culture isn’t a silver bullet. However, it does have a positive, bottom-line impact on things like employee retention and development. Good culture can spill over into improved customer relations, too. It will make an impact.

Getting culture right takes some strategy and a sense of vision, of course. Start gaining those things by investing in some leadership development for yourself. Check out ACES’ courses today!