5 Ways to Improve Your Company Culture

The new year is the perfect time to either fix or strengthen company culture. To help businesses do just that, David Vik, author of the upcoming book "The Culture Secret: Five Steps To Creating Your Own Company Culture" and former culture coach at Zappos.com offers the following five tips to companies.

Step 1:  Focus on vision —Create a compelling vision. Within all companies, groups of people need to know what they are doing or delivering. Once they know the what, all thoughts, decisions and actions can be aligned to it. This will help in creation, reinvention and be crucial for your employees to find the best way to do things.Step 2: Have purpose — Everyone needs a purpose in their lives, and [that is] just as true in businesses. Purpose is why you are doing what you are doing. If your company’s purpose is only about making money, employees won’t stand behind it for long. If the purpose is compelling enough and gives a great reason to work at your company, it will attract passionate employees that want to fulfill your company’s purpose.Step 3: Focus on the business model — Take a good, long look at your business model. Is it in alignment with the wants, needs and demands of the customer? Is it aligned with all the possibilities and opportunities that the Information Age has to offer? If your company has its business model deeply entrenched in hard up-selling, long contracts, "middle person," or doesn't treat the customer like they matter, you may want to change it up a bit to align with the wants, needs and demands of the customer in the Information Age. People now have a choice and a voice, and companies must evolve or dissolve.Step 4: Distinguish yourself — Having or creating unique "wow factors" for your company may be the single most important thing in business today. Why should anyone want to work or buy from your company? What is unique or "wow" about it? Does what you sell or deliver stand out from the rest? Having a unique wow factor should not only be for what you sell, but how you deliver it, especially if you are a commodity or a service, as in those cases, what you sell may not be that unique in the first place.Step 5: Establish your values— Values let the outside world know what you are all about. To come up with your company’s values, it makes sense to get everyone’s input, as they will be the one who need to embody them and live by them. Just take a good look around inside your company and see what the current values are and if they are not what are desired for the future. Create values that will guide the people and the company toward success.

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