Community Leadership Team Thought: ”What is Culture?

What is Culture?

By: Ted Bradshaw

We teach that Core Values are a small set of timeless guiding principles that define culture, who we are and what we stand for. At most QCE’s we’re asked to do a “Check-up from the neck up” and assess ourselves against the EOS Core Values. We’re building a community of like-minded people that share and embrace the EOS Core Values and feel at ‘home’ with one another.

In much the same way, we help our clients build a strong culture while developing and fostering the same close-knit family of employees in their respective organizations that we have in ours.

In a twist to the Core Values exercise we take our clients through, stop reading for a moment, grab a pen and paper (or marker and whiteboard) and write down the company names of your 3 best clients of all time. Now write down the 3 clients that have been the hardest to work with, connect with, and ultimately be successful with. Finally, think about and write down all the reasons, actions, and behaviors that define your most difficult clients.

As you review your list, tabulate the number of times your most challenging clients showed up to your session room arrogant, uncooperative, or undermining, resistant or refusing to change, neglectful or downright selfish, and unwilling or unable to act.

Comparatively, how many of your best clients exemplify or reflect: Humbly Confident values determine what is acceptable or unacceptable, important or unimportant, right or wrong, workable or unworkable. They encompass all learned and shared, explicit or tacit assumptions, beliefs, knowledge, norms, attitudes, and behaviors. Every group or organization has Core Values. Define them or they will define you.

Core Values are like soil; they help or hinder growth, depending on their quality. An experienced gardener sets the boundary and removes everything harmful to growth. Seeds are then planted and encouraged to grow through watering and feeding, along with removing any weeds that might choke the seedlings as they mature.

You can actively seek to cultivate a culture of Healthy around you, in our community, and with your clients, eradicating negative values, attitudes and behaviors and planting positive ones. By intentionally watering and encouraging new growth and challenging unwanted behaviors, change becomes ‘the new way of doing things around here.’