A workplace culture can be a magical thing.  Consider Google, with its “20%” rule (called Innovation Time Off) which fosters personal growth, innovation, and new product development.  Zappos is another well-referenced example of a strong organizational fabric woven from pairing the right person to the right job, and allowing employees the freedom to be human with customers.

Culture and Reputation are Tied
Google and Zappos are but two examples of companies daring to do business differently than our fathers did. That’s to say, while there’s an underlying framework of personnel expectations, accountability, and minimum requirements (they’re for-profit businesses, after all), the top-down view of these areas is more broad. It’s not all skirts-must-hit-the-knee  or  more-than-four-hours-of-PTO-used-counts-as-one-day.  These companies recognize that their people are their greatest asset, their most effective and far-reaching advertising network, and that they represent the front lines of customer interaction.  Employees embody the brand consumers and partners come to know.  Is your staff putting their best foot forward every day? If not, it could be because they lack good examples.  That’s right – you may be failing a little bit every day.

Following these company’s examples, it’s easy to understand how establishing and cultivating a strong culture (along with other key ingredients) can drive a company’s reputation online and off. A culture that’s an ingrained part of a brand personality – complete with attributes and complexities and processes – can influence outside perceptions, talent recruitment, competitive positioning, and sales.  How you treat your employees (and how they see you conduct business and make decisions) will in fact determine your reputation.  How can I suggest that? Because I believe the success of a product (with all of its inherent qualities – quality, pricing, relevance, promotion, positioning) is really a long-tail outcome of culture.

Practice Now, Lay Claim Later
A strong culture doesn’t build itself; “just add water” hasn’t worked since Sea Monkeys.  Leave the grand statements and gestures for later (you know, those sweeping statements printed on parchment placed in heavy frames hung under artistic lighting), after you’ve walked the walk awhile.  Don’t bother with the PR consultant; a righteous company (like yours) will get noticed just by delivering as promised. Besides, you’re not in it for the glory. Just the self-satisfaction of a job done right.

Ways To Build A Culture and Lead An Industry

1. Make a few hard/fast rules your mother would be proud of.  Never deviate, even for a minute.
2. Keep commitments.  If you have an employee review scheduled but something unexpected comes up, park it. You can bet someone’s anxious about that review, and a delay could send the wrong message.
3. Set an example. Arrive prepared and on time for meetings. Disallow complainers and passive-aggressive types any air time.
4. Try on employees shoes for awhile. It demonstrates approachability and an appreciation for the contributions of everyone. Plus, there’s valuable hands-on insight to be drawn from the experience.
5. Accept responsibility when you miss the mark. Saying you’re sorry opens up lines of communication and demonstrates vulnerability that will allow others to take calculated risks.
6. Transparency deters gossip, evens playing fields, and allows others partial ownership of solutions. Just be careful that sharing and involving doesn’t cross the line. When given information “above their level,” some folks become uncomfortable with knowledge they aren’t in a position to process or act upon.
7. Remember your vendors are part of your customer base, too. Sure, they perform a service (or deliver a good), but in turn you remit an agreed-upon sum. Delaying payment (for any reason, despite length of relationship) is a cardinal sin that must be avoided. Can’t afford it? Don’t buy it. Or be forthright and work out alternate terms in advance.  Sure, there’s a leak risk. But news about being lean is far less damning than news of untrustworthiness.
8. Listen closely. I once worked for an agency where the CEO said there were no “CLQ’s” (career limiting questions).  It may not be prudent to act on every suggestion you’ll ever be given, but you’ll engender loyalty and build job satisfaction if you give everyone a chance to be heard. Let voices be heard through in-person discussion, email, and blind submission box.
9. Treat employees like people, not like indentured servants. Make supplies accessible (down with heavily scrutinized request forms, I really do need my Sharpies), ensure my desk and chair height are comfortable, make water freely available, and don’t expect me to wind up my laptop power cord at the end of each day – give me an extra one for home use.

As every person who burns candles at both ends knows, these tactics eventually become debilitating habits leading to exhaustion, stress-induced illness, and mental fatigue. These habits can increase your risk exposure (overlooked details, poor communication, sloppy procedure) if not kept in check. While the economy has affected almost every business in terms of sales, workforce strength, and operations, there are some simple ways organizations can mitigate common “do more with less” pressures.

Agree on what’s important
Don’t let competing priorities, turf wars, or personal agendas impede efficiency or progress.  Rally groups around an iterative framework focused on organizational (not departmental) goals. Scrum is a form of agile development often used in software development, but its principles can be applied to any type of project/program management. Scrum emphasizes communication, collaboration, and the flexibility to adapt to emerging business realities. Any company can easily adapt Scrum to suit their own industry or channel, creating a transparent benchmark and reporting system.

Accessible, easy-to-use collaboration software like Basecamp can support a shared framework like Scrum. Basecamp allows you to set up individual projects, assign specific users, share files, establish tasks and tie them to milestones. Best of all, no one gets accidentally omitted from a message (like with conventional email) thanks to the user group assignments. Basecamp acts like a central repository, providing the continuous “input” support needed for users to act quickly and responsibly.

Make information available to others
Benefits of Scrum include increased transparency, personal accountability, and higher levels of commitment created by the redrawing of functional ownership lines. Continue weaving these themes throughout your organization by adopting a few online tools and ensuring all employees know how to access and use them.

Use a keyword research tool to determine the phrases bearing the strongest, most relevant results for the topics pertaining to your business. Then set up Google Alerts to track and report online mentions of those important keywords.  Results can be published to an RSS feed, which others can subscribe to via an RSS reader, their smartphone, or likely the company intranet. Yahoo! Pipes is a highly configurable alternative to Google Alerts.

Set up a Delicious account specifically for bookmarking information relevant to your broad business dealings. Macro categories (tags) could include those listed below, supplemented by more micro-level tags to aid with faster, more refined search results.

• Primary Competition
• Secondary/Emerging Competition
• Media Mentions (for your brand)
• Industry Trends
• Research (or Reports)
• Markets (or Channels)

Re-Think Processes
Today’s work environment, created by economic, technological, and cultural shifts surpassing events of the prior two years, requires business leaders to reexamine time-honored methods and communication funnels. Tighter budgets, talent gaps, and organizational inefficiencies are wreaking havoc with relevant, well-defined product and speed-to-market, often with an unfortunate downstream effect on customer engagement.

A fresh mindset, executive-level support, and operational transparency all help create a positive new environment capable of encouraging individual contributions for the good of the group.

About The BtoBblogger: Heather Rast is an integrated marketer, driver of insights, and passionate business change agent. She looks for the intersection of relevance, differentiation, and needs fulfillment to help craft holistic strategies that deliver organizational value and nurture consumer affinity. Follow her on Twitter or read her blog at www.insightsandingenuity.com.