Preserving Your Organizational Culture During Company Growth
I’d been a dedicated customer of a local food company from the day they opened. Lily had started out as a small-scale gardener and baker, selling her vegetables and sweetbreads at area farmers’ markets. That’s where I discovered her, and I made her table a regular stop on my Saturday morning rounds. As demand grew, she hired a few friends to help her expand her garden and bakery. After a few years, she had requests from local restaurants, a regular […]
Relying on a Personality Test in the Executive Hiring Process Is Like Following Your GPS Off a Bridge
I’ve been a customer of the same local farm and orchard for nearly 20 years. I go to Gatwood’s for the excellent produce, the great prices, and the incredible donuts. Those things never change. However, over the last ten years, Joe Gatwood, who took over the farm when his dad retired, has made some pretty big changes. An entrepreneur by nature, Joe has expanded the selection and opened orchard stores in several of the surrounding towns. He’s made deals with […]
Create and Cultivate Great Culture to Secure High Performance
Company culture seems to be a widely circulated term, but one that few people clearly understand. Culture is the ‘good stuff” in an organization that makes individuals work harder, more enthusiastically, with honest direct communication, which translates into peak performance. It may be defined as: a company’s values, practices, beliefs, language or simply the way of thinking that exists in an organization.   If you want to be a truly successful and innovative company, culture must be a daily focus in […]
Diversity Is More Than Just a Buzzword: How to Cultivate a Workplace Culture That Celebrates — Not Stifles — Employee Diversity
Hiring for diversity is an especially hot topic in the world of HR right now. But diversity in the workplace is about so much more than filling hiring quotas; having a diverse workforce can position companies to succeed in places where a more homogenous group of employees might fail. Business leaders are increasingly concerned with fostering a workplace culture that values and encourages employee diversity — and great leaders understand how to use that diversity to a company’s advantage. Is […]
Communication is Key
In this week’s video blog our expert guide, Don Hadley, discusses the important role communication plays, whether a business is growing exponentially or contracting. Business growth or decline can cause tremendous strain on individuals, teams, and leaders. There are two main elements affected by businesses growth or decline: cash and people. A critical piece in times of transition is to become a better team. To become a better team, improved communication is key. Good, effective communication is needed for: Day-to-day […]
Culture Trumps Strategy
Organizations may have tremendous leaders and key employees with great talent and who produce powerful results while continually upgrading their capabilities. Additionally, these talented people build and contribute to a strong business strategy as part of the recipe that will propel the organization forward in a way that engages the whole team. At the same time, incremental decay may occur elsewhere in the organization and then, one day (usually in a poor response to a major crisis or an inability […]