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Earlier this month I spoke at a local business event, The Drive Conference – it was an incredible day with great speakers talking about leadership, innovation and growth!

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Thank you all who came along to the conference and the plan is to run another one next year.

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Here is a quick summary of my talk – Culture matters more than you can imagine!

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The organisational culture of your business matters for your people so that they can come to work and enjoy what they do and who they work with. People who enjoy what they do and are engaged at work, are better people outside of work. As a leader you set the tone and shape the culture which enable this to happen.

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The research on the hard numbers shows that your business performs better when the culture improves – for example, one thing Gallup found is that strong organisational culture improved net profit by 85% over 5 years.

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I have a short little acronym with 3 things you can take action on to improve your culture. No matter where you are, ok, good, great; your culture can always improve and always needs work because it involves people.

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M – Meaning

O – Onboarding

M – Measurement

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Your business needs Meaning, a purpose on why it exists and why it matters to the marketplace. Having a strong purpose aligns your team and attracts people into the business, both customers and team. Your team need to have meaning in what they do, they need to know that what they do makes difference in the life of someone else. This gives a sense of contribution and fulfilment to their work.

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Onboarding the right people into your business needs to be a deliberately thought-out process to ensure you are employing the right people, for the right roles, that fit your team dynamics. We use personality profiling to assist in the process. Make the experience of onboarding memorable and enjoyable to help settle the new person into the team. One thing we do, as a whole team we take the new person out for lunch before their first day on the job to help break the ice and provide a relaxed and informal to everyone outside of the workplace.

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Measurement is important for everyone in the team. People need to know if they are winning or losing in their roles. Measurement needs to be against objectives that both drive the business forward and that the team member has some control over, in order that they may own the outcome and recognise their contribution to the business.

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