Any company has a limited amount of resources at its disposal. Whether that’s human labour hours, finances, talent, or clients to leverage, the fact is that no company has unlimited resources.
And you need to be mindful of that. You need to understand that these resources work best when integrated in your daily tasks by strong company culture and objectives. So today, we’re taking a deep dive into setting your company culture and objectives.
Why Are Culture And Objectives Important?
Company culture and objectives have a suite of benefits that will help your organization become a more inclusive, efficient, productive and welcoming place. But there are a ton of other benefits which should make you eager to set-up culture and objectives. Let’s talk about those.
First, there’s the clear benefit of having a clear work environment. Whether you choose to default to an open, creative space, or a disciplined office, a culture reinforcing that will let you and potential candidates see if you’re a fit for each other much faster. It’s a way to see if you’re a match.
But it goes deeper than that. Onboarding (and keeping on board) only people that you know are a fit for your company makes them happier in the workplace, as such increasing their productivity, and making it less likely that they’ll jump ship.
Besides that, good company culture and objectives offer a lot of self-sufficiency to your employees. It gives them a good picture of what you want them to do in the long-run, or what principles they want to follow. As such, when they’ll have to make a decision, they have something to default back to.
For example, Zapier has a default to data in their core values. This means that everyone, from the developers working on the backend of the platform, to the content writers filling their blog with valuable articles, all of them make decisions based on what the data shows works. For example, if they write an article about the best email marketing campaigns, they won’t just throw a few examples and ideas of marketing campaigns in there. They’ll take in-house numbers and statistics to see what type of email marketing campaigns works best, and they’ll write about that.
There’s no editor involved, no marketing head that needs to clarify this task. Anyone that’s put in charge of that article knows what they need to do, because it’s in the company’s culture and objectives.
And that’s another benefit of company culture and objectives. People get their job done better, and more efficiently, because everyone’s working towards a common goal. Employees also need less help getting started on a new project, because they already have a clear focus and goal in mind.
We could go on, but we feel that it’s pretty clear. Company culture and objectives are important, and they help a lot. So how do you go about setting good ones?
How To Set Good Company Objectives
Setting good company objectives is not only good for your team, and their efficiency. This is an important step that even small teams, or one-man shows should undergo.It gives you a clear road to head on, regardless of what you do. It’s also important to settle on some goals and objectives before you clarify a strong culture, because the former will usually affect the latter, but that’s not a prerequisite. Feel free to do these whatever way you want in.
And now, for objectives. There are a few important aspects you need to keep in mind when settling on objectives for your company, as you should when setting goals for anything in life. And the first one is to be specific.
Your company objectives should never sound something like “be the biggest distributor nationally” because that lacks substance and meaning. Biggest, by what standard?
Objectives should be based in reality. You can calculate your total market size, account for the audience segments that are least likely to choose your product and service, then set a measurable objective like “Reach 20% market share in 5 years”.
Oh and, as a side note: Considering today’s globalized economy, you should probably never settle for a “national” objective. There are so many more people out there that you could be helping with your product, it’d be a shame to limit yourself to any borders.
Now back to objectives. You can use the SMART model of goals and objectives to make sure you have attainable goals for your company. Good objectives are:
- Specific, like “reach 1 million dollars in gross revenue” not just “increase gross revenue”.
- Measurable, meaning that there’s a way to track your progress towards that goal
- Actionable, which means that you can take actions each day towards that goal, like “send 5 cold emails each day to increase customer base”
- Relevant, so that your objectives help your company, not just sound good on paper
- Time-bound, meaning that your objectives are to be achieved in a given time frame
This model can help you create valuable goals and objectives that keep everyone on track.
After you settle on good goals, you should make them public so that your employees can follow-up on them, and so that you can hold yourself to the commitment.
Lastly, as you reach them, don’t forget to reward yourself for each milestone and objective you are able to accomplish.
Settling On A Company Culture
Company culture is not as easy to put on paper. And it’s definitely not as easy to implement. For a company culture to work, you need the people in the company to actually live it out. And that’s tough.
But the best place to start is with your values. I’ve told you about Netflix’s default to data, and you can take that as an example of a core value you can implement as well. You can also simply study companies you like, and get inspired by their values. You should also use your objectives, and your plan of getting to those objectives to realize what values define your company best.
After you settle on core values, make sure you lay them out on a paper, or in a document, and share it with your team, as well as make them public.
But that’s not all of it. You should understand that company culture develops without your control too, in meetings, informal chats, at the office, and even after-hours sometimes. It’s a result of your employees interacting with each other, and that’s good. If you have people that share your values, the company culture will follow them along.
But it’s also something you want to be a part of, so that your company culture can develop along with you.
In Conclusion
Setting your company culture and objectives are two very important duties that, when done right, can net you a lot of benefits. But with this article, we hope they’re something you know how to pull off.
And if you liked this piece, you’ll definitely like our article on how to create a strong company culture remotely.
