Why I Created Culture Lab: From Vision to Reality

If I have learned anything from helping dozens of companies create their own cultures, it is to always start with why.

Why am I starting this series of articles? I’d like the opportunity to reflect and share my experiences and lessons learned with others.

CoreBuild’s Culture Lab is a 90-day program designed to help small business owners, executives and leaders determine the culture they would like to design within their companies and embed that culture into their everyday operations. In other words, creating a better place for people to come to work — so work doesn’t suck.

So, why did culture become so important to me?

In my career, I have worked for three venture-backed startups in Kansas City, as well as a business accelerator. These experiences led me to become obsessed with culture.

I’ve worked at an organization that went on a hiring spree, which dramatically changed our work environment for the worse. I’ve worked for founders who didn’t develop a strong why statement, leaving employees to feel disconnected to their roles. I’ve worked at a firm where the high performers weren’t given any positive recognition for their hard work, leaving employees to know feel undervalued.

I’ve worked for founders who said they had an open and inclusive culture, but their actions didn’t match those words. In reality, most of their employees didn’t feel comfortable speaking up at the team meetings, suppressing the flow of great ideas. I’ve worked for a company where its values weren’t defined and questionable business decisions were made, leaving employees to lack confidence in the future of the company.

These problems all stem from workplace culture issues.

There’s no such thing as a perfect culture, but, there are some simple things that can be done to improve your work environment and the way employees interact.

For example, although one of my previous employer’s clearly defined what they did and how they were going to grow, not enough time was spent in exploring why they were building what they were building, in my opinion, their products became anything to anyone in order to make a quick buck.

This behavior led to a lack of connection between the employees and the mission and customers confused about the brand. Another common theme throughout these startups is the lack of practicing what you preach. There was a lot of talk about “why”, but not as much walk. This happens when businesses operate without making decisions based upon a defined set of values.

Through my startup experience, I realized that so many small business owners and leaders need help when it comes to building their cultures. These entrepreneurs are great at their craft, but we can’t expect them to know everything even when it comes to employees and building a strong and effective culture.

Venture-backed startups and small businesses are usually focused on growing their business with the basics, such as product, sales, marketing, and finances. They have to. It isn’t until these companies hire a team — a bunch of the wrong people who become disengaged with their work — until companies realize they have a noticeable problem. Typically, extremely high employee turnover or employee misconduct is when culture gets on the radar. Finally.

But startups don’t have to wait for a noticeable problem to take place before they focus on culture. In fact, culture should be the foundation.

This is the level where the leaders are thinking about their greater vision, the why behind the thing they are building, the values they want to have in mind when making decisions, the shared beliefs or norms among their staff, and the people they want to hire. The way individuals will work together is lined out. Culture is your base and is woven throughout all levels/aspects of the business.

I had a vision of getting a group of small business owners and founders together and showing them not just how to build a strong and effective culture, but helping build it with them. We’ve all read a LinkedIn Pulse article about culture — many of you have probably even listened to a podcast or two. That stuff is great, but it only gets companies so far. We all know culture is important, but that content leaves many feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to even start. Or you start something great, but it eventually dies off and employees become exhausted by the culture flavor of the month.

Culture Lab was designed to provide companies with that workplace culture foundation. CoreBuild doesn’t just show you how and we definitely don’t just do it for you, but we’ll build it with you. That’s why I created Culture Lab.