7 Reasons why Organizational Culture is Important

Good morning. It’s John Garrett coming to you with another episode of Green Apple Slices where every Monday, I always call Rachel Fisch. She’s already there. Yes. Whoo.

Rachel: I don’t know why this took me so funny, but you sounded, I don’t know, angry. I’m trying to figure out what the sound was.

John: No, I was pumping up. This is the Slices, everybody.

Rachel: Oh, right.

John: It’s Monday morning. We’ve got to get going.

Rachel: We are not joking around.

John: No, we are not joking around. We have all the coffee and we are ready to go.

Rachel: So much coffee.

John: Right. And it’s April fool’s day.

Rachel: That’s right. Yeah. Maybe I should’ve said we’re not fooling around.

John: Ah, pun intended. I see what you did there.

Rachel: Yeah.

John: I see what you did there. If this was a real podcast, we’d go back and start over and edit that, but we’re not. But yeah, but we always talk about an article that we find online or something. This one was about corporate culture. It was, “7 Reasons Why Organizational Culture is Important,” by Corey Moseley. I think might have accidentally talked about how important it was last week, but now there’s seven reasons.

Rachel: I think we do it every week.

John: That’s true.

Rachel: It’s what we do.

John: That’s true.

Rachel: But actually, a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about basically identifying your corporate culture. I mentioned really briefly why you might want to do that, like why it’s a good thing to know what that is. Then here comes this blog where it’s like seven reasons. So it’s like go back two weeks, right? Then forward two weeks.

John: Right. So we’re on the 201 level course of this concept.

Rachel: That’s right, 2.0.

John: You need a prerequisite of the 101 that was – no, you need no prerequisites to listen to anything that we say on here.

Rachel: No.

John: You really don’t. Maybe Rachel uses bigger words, but for me, trust me, you can color in the lines. You’ve got it. But the first one being, “It defines your company’s internal and external identity.” It’d be awesome if it was the same, but —

Rachel: Or at least related, like co-related would be great.

John: Exactly. But it at least tells people, “This is what it is. This is what we stand for. This is what we do. This is how we act. This is what our organization is.”

Rachel: Yeah. The thing about identity is that you should be able to tell it apart from other things, right?

John: Yeah.

Rachel: There should be differentiators within it. So the point about a culture is you don’t want the exact same culture as every other organization in your industry because then, you’re not standing out.

John: Did you hear that accounting and law firms? I’m just making sure.

Rachel: Tap on the mike. Boom, boom, boom. Hello. This thing.

John: But yeah, absolutely. Don’t be afraid to stand out a little bit. Don’t be afraid to just be a little bit different. Actually, there’s a firm, Green Hasson Janks, in California. They just had a marketing campaign that shows their people doing their passions. It shows a guy holding a passport with his luggage because he’s a crazy traveler and other guy that’s an avid reader with all these books all over. That’s their bottom market campaign for magazines and things like that. It’s just cool because it shows people, “Hey, we got real people that work here that also happen to be good at what we do.” It also just represents the way that you do business as well, which is huge that everyone, internal and external, knows that’s what you get if you go there. I think the thing is we are always trying to appease everyone and be affirm or a choice for every single person. That’s not possible. It’s not possible. So be really, really for a lot of people. In the same turn, be not for a fair amount of people, too, so then it’s clear like, “Don’t mess with me.”

Rachel: But I think that firms are afraid of that, right? Because as soon as they go to more closely identify who their ideal client is, it’s going to leave people out. And they don’t want to leave people out, right? Because if they leave people out, it means that they’re not getting business from some people. Well, guess what? You’re not getting business from everyone anyway. So you might as well get deeper relationships and get more revenue out of the people that you connect with and conserve exceedingly well than trying to be all things to all people.

John: No, totally. I think that that pretty much just covered two through seven. Well, yeah. But I mean one of them here was, “Your culture can transform employees into advocates (or critics).” You need to be intentional with it. It’s way more than just a steady paycheck and some good benefits. It’s, “Hey, we care about you as a person.” It’s not that hard. It doesn’t cost that much money. It really doesn’t. So it’s just celebrating individual and team successes, giving credit when credit is due, that the team wins, we’re all winning, so let’s celebrate. It doesn’t always have to be all work all the time. It really doesn’t.

Rachel: Yeah. I really like number five, although I’m going to change it a little bit because number five says, “A well-functioning culture assists with onboarding.” I would say a well-functioning culture exists before onboarding because the first connection that you have with a potential candidate, that’s when they start to uncover what your culture actually is.

John: Yeah.

Rachel: So don’t just think about what happens the day they walk in the door as an employee. Think previous to that in how you even attract them in their onboarding process or in their interview process.

John: Yeah, absolutely. No, I completely agree. It’s something that people can feel and they can sense when they’re in the office doing the interview. I’d been to some firms and organizations that when you walk in, it’s like, “Oh, my goodness. Is there any oxygen in here at all? I mean like there’s no colors. No one looks at you in the eye. I mean it’s just like totally crap.

Rachel: No, no one looks at you in the eye.

John: That’s true. That’s actually — never mind. I was at the grocery store when that happened, but anyway, it’s everywhere. But totally. I mean it’s like you can sense it immediately. I don’t need to have you tell me, “Oh, this is such a great place to work.” I’m like, “Ah, no, it isn’t. No, it isn’t because I have eyes and ears.”

Rachel: A friend of mine said, “Anytime somebody tells me who they are, what they do, I instantly don’t believe them.” Like, “I’m an expert in… I’m a thought leader. I am a…whatever.” If you have to tell people that, you’re actually not that. You just want to convince people of that. More people will know what you are by just observing and being around you.

John: Yeah, yeah. If you want to read all seven, you can go to greenapplepodcast.com. Click the link there. Read away. Yeah. Follow us on the show. Hit subscribe. Don’t forget to leave a review if you’d like. That’d be fantastic. Yeah. Follow us on Twitter at @GreenApplePod or Rachel’s direct at @Fischbooks. I’m at @RecoveringCPA. Yeah. We’ll talk to you next week, Rachel. I hope you have a good one.

Rachel: You too. Talk to you later, John