4 Ways to Build a Culture That Supports a Future-Proof Business

How do you create a sustainable, long-term business? Start with your employee culture.

“Maintaining an effective culture is so important that it, in fact, trumps even strategy.” This quote from Harvard Business School professor Howard Stevenson makes me wonder: How many of us have ever worked in a company that truly has a culture that inspires motivation and innovation from employees? The search for such a culture is what many may leave a corporate environment to find. The perception is that it’s easier to find such a culture in a startup.

In my experience, that is not always the case. It depends on the leadership and whether they live their culture and encourage their employees to do the same. Simply having a mission statement or corporate values (but acting in a way that contradicts that) is not enough.

The challenge is that the leaders of startups quite often get distracted with other things – day-to-day operations, fundraising, etc., and their employees can fall to the bottom of the list. However, with no proper training and guidance, no chance to really create an impact, you’re going to find your employees aren’t empowered and will likely end up leaving. 

Strong culture leads to consistently motivated employees and can predict current and future financial performance. A study conducted by Daniel R. Denison and Aneil K. Mishra in 1995 showed that culture can be an integral part of the ongoing change process, (all companies are in a constant state of change, and that pace of change continues to accelerate exponentially) and certain positive culture traits can predict an organization’s performance and effectiveness.

How can you build a strong culture? Here are four ideas. 

Build a culture of trial and error

In order to compete in a rapidly changing world, a company needs to be able to innovate. No matter how traditional the company, if you cannot innovate, then there is no guarantee that you will still be needed in 10 years from now. We all need to adapt and pivot to the needs of the market. To continuously sustain such innovation, you need a workforce that can support that.

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