Business performance and culture have always been linked, although its tended to be anecdotal evidence rather than hard statistics. I myself as part of our High Growth Programme spend some time on the importance of understanding your culture and analysing if it is suitable and desirable for your business going forward. I wrote about these issues on using culture as a support to high growth and culture as a weapon for competitive advantage. Whilst there is little doubt the having the right culture is an important factor in improving your business performance it remains an area that most smaller business owners tend to avoid. It is fair to say that much of this is because business advice and support tends to look at the process driven solutions for business rather...
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3 comments 758 readsPosted on 2012-04-26
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0 comments 389 readsPosted on 2012-04-04
Recently I wrote about the importance of culture in supporting high growth persistent businesses. I've had a couple of requests from business owners if there was somewhere they could get a sample list of questions which they could use as a starting point for a survey on culture. Not having found anything immediately available I put together a list of 20 sample questions that I thought might be useful.
The question on culture are as follows, fell free to use them as you wish. The most important factor to consider is that answers should be anonymous otherwise your employees will be too busy trying to second guess what they think the answer should be rather than what is the truth.
1. Is the pressure to perform unreasonable?
2. Are targets set by managers unreasonable?
3. Would you prefer to work for a fast moving innovative company or a slow...
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0 comments 667 readsPosted on 2012-03-16
This short article will give you practical steps to identify the culture you have now and the culture you would like to have to support you as a high growth business. We have talked earlier about the importance of a strong company culture in a high growth business and how it should be a critical part of your business strategy as it can provide real competitive advantage.
Whilst many owners in high growth businesses understand the need for a strong company culture, their business have developed without any clear focus on this aspect. There is a need therefore for a simple process to identify he differences between the culture you have now to the culture you want, and identify how to go from one to the other.
It is worth repeating that if you run a business you will have a culture. You get this by default, your company culture will be created by your values and the values of your employees. Those with the strongest personality or who are the most vocal will tend to...
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0 comments 599 readsPosted on 2012-03-09
In my earlier piece about the importance of culture in high growth businesses I talked about how culture is considered a soft skill and that most business people tend to ignore it, mostly because there is no imm
Aleutian Cultures (Photo credit: Travis S.) ediate quantifiable benefit and of course because it involves dealing with people. That...
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0 comments 722 readsPosted on 2012-01-17
I have written in the past few weeks about the problem with board meetings and the problem with sales meetings. It was suggested to me that it might be helpful if I explained what particular issues with a dysfunctional company board and how a well run company board would operate. In this article I intend to concentrate on dysfunctional boards or boards in crisis.
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0 comments 768 readsPosted on 2011-12-30
>Some while ago I wrote a short piece on the problem with board meetings, following work with recent clients it seems that there is also problems with sales meetings. Let me recount recent experiences to illustrate what I mean. The meeting starts well and their is an Agenda of sorts. What happens next is that a member of the team is asked to describe what they have done for the preceding month. There follows a long rambling commentary about how busy they have been and what opportunities their are and a volley of reasons why they haven't sold us much as they thought. This monologue took about 20 minutes.
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0 comments 761 readsPosted on 2011-11-02
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0 comments 876 readsPosted on 2011-10-26
Culture is one of the most under rated aspects influencing a business. Get it right and you can support and promote cooperation to support and reinforce success. Get it wrong and you can say goodbye to a successful business and say hello to a world of hurt.
Image via WikipediaBRITISH POET AND CRITIC MATTHEW ARNOLD
VIEWED "CULTURE" AS THE CULTIVATION
OF THE... -
0 comments 1,018 readsPosted on 2011-09-22
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0 comments 1,030 readsPosted on 2011-07-29
Whilst planning is important for all businesses it is vital in a high growth company. More importantly planning needs to be more thorough and detailed than in companies where growth is at a more leisurely pace. Its obvious really, issues come at you faster and more frequently in a high growth scenario and you and your management team need to be ready to deal with it. You can’t do this in a purely reactive mode, you and your management team need to have explored in detail the key linkages in your business and have some understanding of the potential stress points as well as solutions for different scenarios. If this seems a bit of overkill, it isn’t. Having been in the senior management team of a business that grew from 250 to 3500 staff in less than 10 years I know the pressures consistently fast growth puts on an organisation. One of the key...
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