What is the corporate culture of your company?

Damilola Oyebayo

 Damilola  is a leadership and management consultant. For over 3 years, Damilola has helped many leaders and aspiring leaders improve their leadership capabilities. He is committed to helping readers discover their dreams, improve their skills and lead value-oriented lives.

Considering the current problematic state of the giant Canadian Pharmaceuticals, Valeant, even after various industry analyses, Huffington Post concludes that the major underpinning issue affecting the company is “Improper conduct”. Note, this might sound very nebulous on the surface, but upon further scrutiny, it will be realised that poor corporate governance practices can ruin a company the same way a company without a value oriented culture can be likened to a soldier walking in a garden filled with land mines.

Every individual is a product of a culture, while some break the ‘wall’ built by their culture to acquire new culture, others live within that wall, it is then safe to say that like habit, a culture can be taught, learnt and acquired. A culture is simply defined as all the knowledge and values shared by a society or the attitudes and behaviour that are characteristic of a particular social group or organisation, in this context, culture means a shared value system within a corporation.

The desire of every forward-thinking entrepreneur is to see the company grow over time, usually, the owner conceives the dream/vision, then it becomes a plan, then he begins to execute, then the company begins to grow, he realises he can no longer handle the workload, hence, the need to employ people, for most corporations, this is the make or break point. Many things can go wrong, it is possible to hire the wrong persons (after all, a bad hire is very often worse than no hire at all) or you could hire the right persons but you didn’t have any identified value system before employing the new workers, or during the ‘onboarding’ process, you failed to communicate the culture of the corporation effectively to the new employees.

This is one of the many reasons the Fortune 500 companies will continue to grow, because they have a culture i.e. a value system they communicate to their employees, they have a shared vision, they are working towards the same goal, unconsciously and subconsciously, the employees know the ‘dos and dont’s’ of the corporation, this value system informs their thoughts, guides their performance while working with clients, they do not compromise on the decisions that will threaten the already developed culture and they attack (ferociously) any employee that is working repeatedly to fall below the already set standard.

Identifying and teaching a culture within a corporation might seem insignificant especially in relation to the output of the company, but adroit company executives know it is necessary to communicate such, that is why in top corporations, during the onboarding process (for new employees), they teach these values, some even make it a mandatory course for the new employees to take before they can be assigned any task within the corporation, similarly, since habit and culture can be learnt and since learning is a process (not a goal), asides the fact that the values are ingrained in the employees, they also paste it in every corner within the office, on souvenirs and every other material belonging to the corporation so that the employees can be constantly reminded.

As regards the features of the culture, on one hand, it is important that the culture must be in relation to the nature of the services provided by the corporation, on the other, it is also important that the culture should foster a healthy work environment. By healthy I mean the culture should promote good interpersonal relationship among the workers, the culture should promote some basic human principles like respect for the dignity of every individual within the corporation, the cleaner within the office should be treated with respect by the CEO, compliance with basic ethical standards, quality control, language and communication, all the soft skills are as important as being qualified for the position of Chief Marketing Officer or Receptionist. It is part of the brand of the corporation; even the clients should identify the culture with the company because they (the clients) also benefit from the rich culture. It is imbued in things like mission statement, vision, motto, and the seemingly irrelevant things.

Many argue that it is difficult to have such culture in Nigerian corporations especially when company owners see themselves as demigods, it is hard to blame such executives and that is why many of such companies never grow bigger than they should (ordinarily), nonetheless, some few corporations in the country have value oriented cultures.

If you are a top executive and you do not have a value oriented culture in your corporation, it is never too late, you could identify those values and principles that will add value to your corporation, define it expressly and start teaching your employees, develop your brand around the value system. Likewise, if you just started a company or you intend to start one later, do not forget to include a value oriented culture in your development plan (in the interest of your company), because the earlier the better, for you, the employees, the clients and the company on the overall.

People who don’t feel valued are unlikely to stay around for long. Maybe they’ll stick for the money or the chance to do something cool- but they won’t develop real loyalty. Someday, that will be tested.

Could you identify and describe the culture in your company? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below or on LinkedIn (Damilola Oyebayo) and Twitter (@oyebayod), as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.