3 Ingredients for Building a Great Company Culture

We’ve all been there…the company with the negative culture. The one where you’re afraid to raise issues to your boss. And the one where you secretly search for a new job.

Chances are, no one sets out to create a bad company culture. So, how do they come to be? And how can you make sure your company’s culture is positive, a place for your employees to thrive?

Chris Yoko, President and CEO of Yoko Co. came on the latest episode of the B2B Revenue Executive Experience podcast to talk about intentionally creating a great company culture.

Culture happens…whether or not it’s intentional

Your company has a culture…whether or not it was created intentionally or unintentionally.

Most organizations don’t do culture intentionally.

When that happens, there’s not really any purpose driving the culture. It just kind of happens and is shaped by whoever happens to be there at the time. And it usually ends up being a negative culture.

The bottom line, what ends up happening when you’re not intentional about your culture is a lot of chaos going in a bunch of different directions…and your people wondering how they ended up working for such a dysfunctional company.

But, if you build culture with intention, you can build something great. Something unifying that allows people to feel more aligned with the work they’re doing and more empowered to do it.

“Culture happens regardless of whether it’s intentional or unintentional.”

Chris Yoko, President and CEO of Yoko Co.

So, how do you build a culture like that?

Chris described three things you need to focus on to build a great culture.

#1: Your people have to understand the impact they have.

#2: They need to feel like they work with people that they like working with. People that make their day better.

#3: They need to feel like they get to do something that they’re really good at.

If you put all three of those things together, you will have the opportunity to build something really good.

And at the end of the day, it all comes down to actually caring about the people you work with.

Taking it one step further

“The impact of the work you do has a ripple effect that is far greater than the quarter.”

Chris Yoko, President and CEO of Yoko Co.

Businesses are always started by entrepreneurs.

By out-of-the-box thinkers who seek to make meaningful change.

But when it comes to measuring performance, every business uses the exact same quarterly scorecard. So, all of these companies that were started for such unique reasons end up playing by the same rules.

What if we could break out of that habit?

What if we played by the scorecard that mattered most to us? To our companies?

What if we said, “Yes, we need to make a profit and drive revenue so we can all provide for our families. But what we’re most excited about is having this kind of impact or doing this kind of thing.”

That fundamentally changes the way you operate an organization because you no longer feel like you’ve got to do the business version of keeping up with the Joneses.

The impact of the work you do has a ripple effect that is far greater than the quarter.

Imagine what focusing on that would do for your company culture.

We Ask Every Podcast Guest These 2 Questions:

What’s Effective in Earning 15 Minutes of Your Time?

The thing that tends to break through for me is just asking for help. I often encourage those graduating from college to email people in the industry that they want to be in, offer to take them out for lunch, and just ask: “Hey, what advice would you give yourself if you were this age getting into this industry?”

You’ll be amazed at how many people are willing to talk to you when you approach it from a relationship first perspective.

Your Grandest Piece of Advice for a Sales or Marketing Professional?

If you can build a network of people that know you as a reliable, steadfast partner who will deliver results no matter which organization you represent and who will right things that go wrong — that is a network that is going to be worth far more than any list you can buy.

This blogpost includes highlights of our podcast interview with Chris Yoko, President and CEO at Yoko Co. For the entire interview, you can listen to The B2B Revenue Executive Experience.

If you don’t use Apple Podcasts, you can listen to every episode here.

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