When you think of company culture, do you think of a fully stocked kitchen and a foosball table? Unfortunately, we’ve been fed an inaccurate idea of what it means to elevate your company, confusing culture with perks. So then, what does it look like to create a world-class company culture, and how do we implement it? In part two of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition, we are continuing our conversation with business coach and author, Cameron Herold and discussing the elements that will shape a company culture and attract great talent.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:06] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less game changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:24] Welcome back to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition with the CEO Whisperer and Business Growth Guru Cameron Herold. In part one we talked about the power in creating a Vivid Vision instead of a Mission statement or a Vision Statement and in today’s episode we’re discussing how to make your work culture the best it can be. Spoiler alert – as a COO, there’s always something else you can do to elevate your company. Here’s some tips on where to begin.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:55] So let’s switch over to creating a world class culture. You’ve done a lot of work around that, so tell me about culture and how it can inspire internal teams, potential customers and current customers. What’s the role of culture in an organization?

Cameron Herold: [00:01:09] So first off, I think we’ve really been done a bit of a disservice by the mass media on what company culture is, what the mass media talked about were perks. You know, they talked about the foosball table and the free lunches and the the massage therapists coming in to do massages. That’s not culture. Those are perks that you’re giving your employees. Culture starts. If I think about like a jigsaw puzzle, the corners, the four corners of the jigsaw puzzle are the culture. The first one is your Vivid Vision. So it’s that alignment that everyone can see what the CEO can see. If everyone can see the same vision, if everyone is on the same page. If you get rid of all the people that don’t like what they see and you keep attracting more people that do like what they see. That’s the first corner of the jigsaw puzzle. The second corner of the jigsaw puzzle. Are your company’s core values. You have to hire based on the core values. You have to fire people based on the core values. You have to obsess about living the core values on a daily basis. You have to celebrate the core values. You’ve got to thank people for emulating and living the core values, and you have to reinforce them on a daily basis. Most companies get their core values wrong because they either have single words as a core value, which end up being confusing. So core values should be short phrases such as deliver what you promise, respect the individual, pride in all you do right? Very easy to understand. Core values should be limited to four or five core values, not seven or ten. If you have so many core values, you can’t live them. So if you have four or five, then you’re probably willing to fire people who break them. And then the core values have to be something that you’re going to recruit on. So that’s one area that that companies need to really focus on. As the second corner, right, are the core values and the culture emerges from those. The second or the third corner of the jigsaw puzzle is your BHAG, your big, hairy, audacious goal. And that’s a Jim Collins term from Good to Great. A lot of companies do it wrong where they say their BHAG (bee-hag) is a billion, whatever or a million some things. By definition,