EP. 30 Secrets to How Remote Companies Build Organizational Culture from Anywhere

Organizational culture is built deliberately and differently in top performing remote companies. In this episode, we interviewed Brett Putter,  author, culture expert and CEO of CultureGene. Brett shares with us details into his research for his most recent book, Own Your Culture: How to Define, Embed and Manage your Company Culture. Brett researched 50 CEOs of startup and high-growth companies with top performing cultures. These CEO’s are skilled in clearly defining their culture, mission, vision, and values, and actively recruit new employees for a fit with the values of the company. They are also able to explain how their leadership team has a framework for making decisions based on organizational culture. The leadership teams embed this framework into their processes. In-Office CultureCommunicationIn-office cultures depend more on synchronous communication (i.e. in-person meetings, phone calls). Synchronous communication requires presence and availability which is easier to achieve when the entire staff is in the office. The dynamic of being in the same place allows the culture to develop by default. With in-office cultures, leaders could afford to be lazy in building the culture because of the osmosis that happens between people.  In-office culture occurs naturally in break rooms, walking down hallways and during random points of contact.  This feeling of connection and being in the loop is often a huge challenge in remote cultures. ProcessesIn-office cultures also depend less on having written processes. According to Brett’s research in-office culture had between 20%-40% of their processes defined and written down. It’s easier to touch base with someone and ask questions about processes in the office.Remote CultureCommunicationSuccessful remote cultures depend more on asynchronous communication, (i.e. company handbooks, forums, collaborative documentation, project management tools, video messages, etc). Remote companies design and build their company around asynchronous communication.How to Maximize Asynchronous Communication - Overcome Zoom FatigueProcessesRemote companies depend more on written processes than their in-office counterparts. The most successful remote companies have a working document or company handbook for processes and use them regularly. Virtual Meetings IdeasWhen it comes to leading virtual meetings, the most successful companies have a working document for how to prepare for and run meetings that includes pre-work. This pre-work includes a structured agenda, deciding who should be in the meeting, and asking those in the meeting to complete tasks before the meeting as well. Many companies explain that meeting participants have to respond to this working document and do the pre-work or they should not show up to the meeting. The pre-work becomes an extremely important element to maximizing time spent on a Zoom call.Cultural ValuesThe CEO’s that Brett researched were able to go into detail around how they structured initiatives around their cultural values. Most of the CEO’s also had implemented specific times when they re-evaluated their values. When one of those companies would lose a VP-level leader or higher, the companies were able to explain specifically how this person was or was not performing compared to the values of the company. Learn more Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.