At KCG, we are big believers that an organization’s culture will impact how successful it is today. And, perhaps more importantly, how successful it can be in the future. An organizational culture that embraces learning, growth, new ideas and is also able to attract, train and retain the best individuals will, in our experience, out compete most competitors – and destroy those with corrosive cultures. Yet while there is an increasing amount written about culture, there are few “how to” guides that discuss specific ideas on how to create and maintain a world-class culture.
We recently came across a book that has some really thought provoking ideas on the topic and wanted to share it. Robert Richman recently released a book called the Culture Blueprint which is at the cutting edge of attempting to provide a road map of tools – or – a blueprint. Robert was hired at Zappos by Tony Hsieh after Tony had begun to realize there was an increasing amount of interest in the Zappos culture. Tony hired Robert to start Zappos Insights – a consulting arm of Zappos that shares the Zappos culture with the world. Now granted, the Zappos culture isn’t for everyone – but what’s important is that visitors and clients get to examine what a strong culture looks like, how it behaves, how it manifests itself in providing differentiated products / services, etc. In the end, or course, that’s what really matters – the results. But it’s our belief that in the business world of tomorrow, those results will be increasingly impacted positively (or negatively) by culture.