A Simple (and Powerful) Way to Think About Culture

For many, the concept of company culture can feel a bit nebulous and intangible.

If you search online, you'll receive a wide variety of definitions, descriptions, anecdotes, and illustrations, and (in our experience) these definitions all tend to be a bit buzzwordy, esoteric, or convoluted.

It's no wonder why it's so difficult for leaders to wrap their heads around the idea of building (or improving) culture when it's so challenging, just to get a clear definition of what culture is.

And it's practically impossible for someone to change or improve something they don't quite understand.
Knowing this, one of our top goals here at CultureStoke is to give you a simple, powerful, and actionable way to think about culture. So here we go...

When we distill culture down to its most essential, base level, culture is all about behavior.

More specifically, culture is what determines what's acceptable and unacceptable behavior in your workplace, your home, your family, your community, and beyond. When you think about it like this, culture is the sum of your behaviors. And when we talk about behaviors, we define behavior as an observable act. With an "observable act" being something that you can see, hear, or record.

Admittedly, these definitions are intentionally simple to help people understand the fact that culture drives behavior and behavior drives results (sales, profits, etc.). The great news is, when you improve your behavior, you improve your culture.

Improve your culture. Improve your results.
Better behavior = Better culture = Better results.

Recommended Activity + Next steps:

Moving forward, we encourage you to choose one (and only one) behavior you'd like to improve over the next 5-7+ days.

Step 1. Commit to the following and write down:

a. What behavior you're going to change,
b. Why it's important for you to change the behavior,
c. What this new behavior change looks like in action,
d. The result you'll achieve by taking action.

Step 2. Follow through and live your behavior change over the next 5-7+ days - record your progress daily

Step 3. Reflect on what you accomplished and what you learned.

In the meantime, if there's anything we can do to support you, please click the link below to get in touch with us.

With stoke + gratitude,
Marty Imes x Wes Love