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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.
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Organizational culture can be briefly described as the
values and behaviors that contribute to the unique
social and psychological environment of an organization.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To build a good organizational culture you must do the
following things.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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