How our company's focus on culture yielded incredible results
For me, the awakening was about a year ago.
I was standing on stage speaking to about 200 employees. I am an extrovert. In situations like that, the energy I get from the people in the room is off the charts.
I was speaking about how far our organization had come in the last few years. The pride in the room was palpable. It was in that moment I realized there was momentum here, and there was capacity to do more.
I knew I could multiply the pride I saw in that moment many times over if I pivoted my main focus to building a culture that created joy.
As I thought about why we should invest in our culture, I followed both my head and my heart. There are many studies that show a great culture drives great results.
A Harvard Business Review article titled the “Neuroscience of Trust” outlined that in companies that had trust, employees were 76 percent more engaged, 50 percent more productive and had 29 percent more overall satisfaction in their lives.
And this feels intuitive; we’ve all been in situations where trust was prevalent and where it was not.
I also followed my heart. I genuinely care about the people I work with. I knew from my own experience that I was much more inspired and driven when I had trust in my leader and those around me.
I also knew it was the number one thing I looked for when taking roles in past: If we focused on culture, I knew great talent would find us.
We then set out to create a great culture; a culture to be envied was the goal. And I had NO idea what the heck that meant … or what the results would be. I knew we could do great things; I never imagined just how great an impact we could make.
Over the next three days, I will be sharing with you a different aspect of our journey to focus on culture: How we did it and how it worked. Check back tomorrow for the second installment.