Every organization have a specific culture.  The question is what kind of culture do you want your organization to have?.  The organizational culture you create for your organization will influence how long current employees will stay working for you or whether potential employees will come to work for your small business.

Organizational culture can be briefly described as the values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization. 

What values and habits that you want your employees to adopt in order to contribute to the vision and mission of the organization.  Organizational culture can have written and unwritten rules.

Large companies such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. have a specific organizational culture that they established and cultivate to attract and keep certain type of employees because they recognize that it contributes significantly to their bottom line.

The people who get up every day and come to work for you small business want to to feel good about coming to work.  They want to be motivated and get along with other employees.   As a small business CEO you have an obligation to create the kind of environment that will enable them to do that.  The bottom line is that your organization will benefit trumendously from highly motivated employees who like coming to work and spending time in the company of their fellow employees.

To build a good organizational culture you must do the following things. 

VISION:  Create a vision for the organization.  Every organization must have a vision that defines what it is that they’re trying to become at some point in the future.  A vision provides clear focus and defines what the direction of the organization is.  By knowing what the organization is trying to become employees can focus on the tasks that will achieve that end.  See some examples of a vision statement are:  30 Examples; Your Dictionary examples.

MISSION:  What is the mission of your organization?  Define the mission for the organization.  A mission statement states the overall purpose of your business, what it does and how it intends to do it.  A mission statement helps to focus your employees on the day to day accomplishments.  It informs them on how to carry out the task of providing a product or service to the customer.  Some examples of fortune 500 companies mission statement here. 

VALUES:  Set and emphasize the values that are important to your organization.  These values will define how employees behave towards one another and management.  Some examples of values that you should have as part of your organizational culture are: dependability, reliability, loyalty, commitment, consistency, honesty, innovation, adventurousness, respect, motivation, etc.

TRUST:  Establish and cultivate trust in the organization.  Trust is an important element in building a corporate cutlure.  Trust is the glue that holds a team together.  As the CEO you build trust by setting the example and living up to your commitments.   Establish clear boundaries and hold people accountable when those lines are crossed.  It is very difficult to restablish trust once it has been violated.  Your employees will drift away from each other and leave your organization if violators are not quickly and appropriately dealt with.  Don’t wait for your employees to bring  trust issues to you…go find it.

TEAMWORK:  Create teamwork.  Without teamwork employees could be marching off in their own directions, wasting time and resoruces doing tasks that’s already been completed by someone else and deriving less satisfaction out of their jobs.  Teamwork requires a leader of the team to direct the actions of the team and hold each member of the team responsible for carrying their fair share of the load.  A team functions better when you place members on the team who enjoy working with each other.  As a result, communication will flow better, there will better interation among team members, the result of their efforts will be better, and more importantly, time and resources will not be wasted.  A great idea is to let members on the team take turns filling in as the team leader.

FREEDOM:  Give your employees some freedom.  Don’t micro-manage them.  Don’t check on their every move.  Give them some leeway to arrive and depart work.  If they have to arrive 7:00am give them between 7:00 am and 7:15 am.  If they arrive 15 minutes late give them the opportunity to make it up at the end of the shift.  Give them the freedom to interact and talk to other employees.    You’re paying them to get certain tasks accomplished, so if they are getting it done, let them have the opportunity to do other things.  People thrive when they are free.  Give your employees the freedom to do other things that could enhance their skills which could end up benefiting your small business as it grows.  This also mean giving them the freedom to fail.  Learning does not occur without failure.  Don’t punish every failure.  Use it as a teachable moment.

DECISION MAKING:  You should establish a clear line of communication so that all employees know who has the authority to make certain decisions.  If the lines of communication are not clear and employees get punished for making decisions that they don’t have the authority to make bad things happen.  It could result in bad customer service, stocks don’t get replenished when they should, customer complaints don’t get resolved, employee issues don’t get resolved, etc.   Identify the issues that the business could experience and determine who in the organization will have the authority to address those issues.  You have to continually evaluate those issues over time as your business grows. 

GROWTH OPPORTUNITY:  Create opportunities for your employees to enhance their skills and grow as the business grows.  Every employee that comes into an organizataion is looking for upward mobility.  No one wants to be doing the same job they’re doing today ten years from now.  If they don’t find the opportunity to move up in your organization they will find it elsewhere.  As your small business evolve, continually evaluate the job positions and create opportunities for upward mobility.  Do things such as create supervisory positions; give them training to seek positions that require more skills; create team leader positions for special projects, etc.

RISK-TAKING:  Encourage risk-taking in your organization.  Risk taking could result in employees coming up with innovative ways to enhance your business.  It also does wonders for the employees confidence and morale.  You should give your employees some time on a daily or weekly basis to work on any new idea that they chose.  Let them know that they’re free to bring new ideas to you, and when they do you have an obligation to make sure that those ideas are well received, even if you chose not to pursue them.