Evaluating Your Company Culture

This week I attended three great events: a webinar on succession planning; a roundtable about fraud in privately owned businesses and the Centerstate CEO Economic Champions luncheon.  Thinking back on all three of these events they all mentioned and showed some common themes; loyalty, culture and communication.  Obviously there was much substance to each event but I found it interesting that some of the same thoughts and statements came up.

The webinar presented by Family Business Consulting Group out of Chicago was titled “Passing the Baby:  The 8 Must Haves of Successful Succession Planning”.  Just the title sets the tone of how founders and/or the current generation feel about their family business.  This is their creation; they care deeply about their company and their loyal employees.  They may not believe that anyone else can adequately be prepared to continue it.  How do they get past this belief?    One of the “must haves” is communication.  Business owner have hopes and goals of what they want for themselves, their family and for their business and must communicate these.  Communication can define the culture that is in your business and family.  Establishing a culture that employees and family members feel as they are valued and respected can engage them in the success and continuation of the business.

The fraud roundtable presented by Rosa Pinti, CPA, CFE  from Bowers & Company CPA's also touched on the importance of this loyal and respected culture in privately held businesses.  How this type of culture might help reduce fraud in the workplace by a few percentage points.  The roundtable group offered that even the small things and gestures have helped them in their business and much of it was about how they have communicated to their employees how important each of their employees are to the business; the sustainability of the business and the strength of the business. it all matters. 

Then I attended the Centerstate CEO Economic Champions; this was a great uplifting event for Central New York.  Doug Logan announced the names of the companies being celebrated while their employees sat at tables and cheered and waved the SU basketball clappers in the air.  The loyalty and honor felt by these people in the room showed how proud they are to work for these companies.  They showed their loyalty and their appreciation for the culture that they are part of.  As we all streamed out of the OnCenter we had a good feeling about our area knowing that these companies and many others are successfully achieving economic growth in our area.

Join us November 16^th as we hold a breakfast forum at Justin’s Tuscan Grill presented by The Leading Element; “Navigating Difficult Conversations” Maybe we can help the communication efforts in your family business and help with your feel good culture!