You have already set the company’s objectives for this new year and you are off to get them! The second step is usually to plan and strategize around ‘How’ to reach these objectives. A key ingredient to getting there is having the right team morale and a healthy company culture around because the truth is that ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ – Peter Brucker.

But wait, what’s company culture?

A lot of employees think that a good culture is when there’s a tennis table or a dartboard at the office or when the company provides free coffee and food. Well, that will definitely create a nice workplace ambiance but that’s NOT what culture is!

A company’s culture refers to the beliefs and behaviors that determine the interaction between the employees in order to get the job done. This culture develops organically over time from the cumulative traits and paradigms of the employees.

The employees turnover at organizations with strong cultures is 14%, compared to 48% in companies with poor cultures. In this article, we are going to share with you some key ingredients of a high-performance culture so you can implement them your company.

Before you read further, we invite you to quickly assess your current company culture by answering the following 2 questions:

• How do you feel when you come to work in the morning?
• How do you feel when you leave the office by the end of the day?

A high-performance culture leads an organization to achieve superior results by setting clear business goals, defining who does what, creating a trusting environment, and encouraging the employees to continuously grow and develop themselves.

Here are some secrets of a high-performance culture.

Secret #1: Every employee must understand the business!

The most essential secret to getting all team members committed and working passionately is to have them aligned on the purpose of their work. “Why are we doing what we are doing?” and being aware of what the company is focusing on achieving right now and how are we contributing to global success.

The most motivating reason that gets employees out of their beds feeling excited to come to work is to do great stuff and be proud of what they do before they go home. That’s the human drive.

The monetary incentive programs are somehow good but less effective than nonmonetary incentives, especially over time. They have so many potential pitfalls and they are considered as entitlement rather than a motivator.

The key here is to have an audacious goal which will promote the creativity and innovation at work because creativity is only used when we do not know how to achieve our goals.

Secret #2: Accountability, Freedom and Responsibility

A second secret to team success is accountability; breaking down the objectives into measurable milestones as well as setting who is accountable for what. If you team requires a healthy objective management framework we advise you to read our article on OKR.

Employees should feel that they are responsible and free to give constructive feedbacks on how they can improve the company’s performance. Whether it’s related to their colleagues, the culture, the project they are working on or the process they have to go through to get something done.

Secret #3: Working and Growing together

The second most significant motivator for employees is to work with upbeat and talented colleagues who help them become better and get closer to their goals every day.

As we stated at the beginning of the article, company culture is the collection of the employees’ beliefs and behaviors which are inherited from their unique environments. Some employees were raised to believe that in order to succeed in their job they have to be really smart. That’s why they doubt themselves and doubt what they are capable of achieving at work.

The control mechanism of our beliefs and behavior is ‘paradigm’ so for us to improve the culture, each employee should deliberately work on their negative paradigms and replace them with positive ones. We invite you to read more about paradigms.

It’s very important to encourage one on one conversations and feedback between employees and their managers so they can provide constructive feedback and help each other achieve their goals and become better.

Frequent check-in and conversations will highlight what you need to stop doing as well as what you should start doing to progress and achieve better team productivity while going forward.

Remember, culture eats strategy for breakfast

Unlike the morale of the company which is filtered down from the top, every single employee is a contributor to building or ruining the culture of the company.

We hope we could help you with some guidelines for positive and performant team culture. If you are interested in implementing a high-performance culture or improving the existing culture, we invite you to reach out to us and we would love to show you how we do it and accelerate your road to success!