Your Organizational Culture is Your Unfair Market Advantage

Did you know that your company possesses a force that can drive it to new heights, power it through a recession, or guide it through an ever-changing market? Do you know what "it" is? Or how to leverage it? That force is your company's culture. Beginning with your employees and emanating out to your partners, the market, and most importantly, to your clients. It is highly contagious and affects all of the stakeholders in your company.

Every company has a culture. Whether they choose to consciously work on it to keep it positive, productive, efficient, and strong is another question. A company's culture is often explained as "the way we do things." However, every company is different even though they may use the same words to describe "how they do things."

A company's culture can be described as contagious or infectious-negative or positive, depending on how it is perceived. When it is positive, the culture is usually described as cult-like where employees, vendors, and customers either love or hate the company with nothing in-between. Its culture is described as infectious, like laughter. When the culture is negative, these same words are used to describe it to express the need to get away from the company. Its culture is described as contagious, like a disease.

Keeping the culture transparent boosts morale, productivity, efficiency, and creativity inside the company and provides a powerful experience for your vendors, the market, and your customers alike. It also creates accountability for the company, employees, and how business is done.