What kind of company culture are you creating?

Stuart McDaniels,
Materials Manager

Have you seen the recent advertisement for the United States Postal Service? It is a humorous commercial about a guy working in an office, stuffing envelopes to be mailed. A postal worker comes in to make a pickup and mentions to the guy that the company he works for could save money by utilizing a particular service that the post office offers. Just as the office worker's boss comes into the room, he replies, “That’s cool and all, but it ain’t my money. I seriously do not care.” The postal worker tries to bail the office worker out by saying, “So you don’t care what anyone says because you want to save this company money?” The office worker replies, “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” and tries to high five his boss who looks annoyed and just keeps walking past him.

We can laugh at a silly commercial on television, but the question remains, is that attitude prevalent in our workplace? Of course, it’s possible anywhere, but is that truly what is happening in our companies?  A lot of that depends on how we, as leaders, work to shape our company culture.

Every company has a culture. You may have never given it much thought, or maybe don’t believe it, but it’s true. Your company’s culture is constantly being shaped, either subtly or overtly, positively or negatively, depending on many varying factors and inputs. What are you doing to shape your culture? Maybe there are things you are or aren’t doing that are impacting your company’s culture that you are not even aware of, both good and bad. It happens all the time.

How often do you talk about costs within your organization with your workforce? Never? Occasionally? As a leader are you working on creating a cost conscious culture? Are you leading by example? Creating or changing a culture in a positive way takes work, persistence and determination. It’s much more than a catch phrase or a motto posted on the break room bulletin board. I believe that if you put effort into molding your culture into one of cost consciousness it will pay off in more ways than you can imagine.

This article originally appeared in Modern Memorialization, Trigard Memorials' weekly electronic newsletter featuring information for the funeral industry. Sign up for your free subscription at http://www.trigard.com/thursdays.