The Culture of any business is critical to its long term success – a business can still be successful with a poor culture. The environment of the sector in which you operate and the culture of your competitors will help to determine your success.

So what is Culture? Well put simply it’s “How you do business”. It’s how you interact with your own people and people outside your business. It’s about how you make decisions, what motivates you, how you measure success, how you are asked to behave. A culture is formed by its leaders and developed over many years to become part of your business’s DNA.

Changing a culture is the most difficult thing you will undertake in your business and takes a huge amount of courage. Many business leaders will look to remedy many aspects of their business before recognising that it is the business culture that needs to change. It normally takes a major industry event, financial ruin or change in leadership for the culture to be changed in any business. There are many signs but they are generally ignored as a symptom of another deficiency in the business but not the culture – you’re losing good customers, no job satisfaction, not making the profit you should, working too many hours etc etc.

Many people will focus on the hard issues, cash and safety in business – after all cash is king and safety is your number one priority – YES !!! Well how about making your people and your customers your priority? I did say it takes courage!! That’s not to say cash and safety are not important, of course they are, but we will focus on those through our people and our customers.

We will support this with a Vision, Values and Behaviours that mean something to our people and it will become how we do business. We will support this with a cultural induction across the business with a clear focus on the hard and soft objectives for your business.

Leadership will be essential and empowerment to your people to drive improvements continually to improve your bottom line. Staff morale will improve along with customer service, delivering safer and more financially rewarding results.

Your Vision, Values and Behaviours must become part of your everyday life and your leaders must lead by example. It is not a tap to be turned on and off, it must be seen to be both communicated and lived by everyone to be sustainable. Your people are your most valuable asset; give them the culture they deserve to deliver you the best results for all concerned.