No matter what size your company is, defining and promulgating your culture is going to be key to growth and retention. A vibrant, exciting company culture 
attracts top talent, and a welcoming, open one keeps them around. More than happy hours and motivational posters, though, company culture includes values, mission, and instilling a sense of efficacy in employees. This has crucial utility in illustrating the true value, impact, and meaning of your talent's work. Often, brands will release short videos seeking to demonstrate what life is like at their organization. Clearly there's more to building a brand than a funny video with uplifting ukulele in the background, so let's take a deeper dive into what culture means and how you can go about defining and promoting it with the following resources.
Who doesn't love a good TED talk? Jay Wilkinson, President of Firespring, has had no trouble attracting top talent and keeping them around. Here, he draws upon his experiences to discuss the cultural nature vs. nurture debate, meaning, does company culture arise organically, or is it something that must be carefully cultivated?
Buckle up for this one, recruiters. This one is straight from Stanford's "How to Build a Startup" Course, and for the lesson on culture they were able to bring in AirBnB Founder Brian Chesky and Former COO of Zappos Alfred Lin. If you still aren't sold on the importance of company culture, or even what it truly means, he breaks it down early on in his talk:
"Why it matters is that it becomes the first principles you sort of go back to when you make decisions. It becomes a way to align people on values that matter to the company. It provides a certain level of stability to fall back on. And it provides level of trust, people sort of trust each other with, but it also gives us a list with which you should be able to figure out what to do and what not to do. And what the more important thing about that is what not to do. Then finally the other thing that is important is it allows you to retain the right employees. There are people in this world that are not going to be a fit for your company, but if you have good strong culture, and the strong core values, you'll know who you want to retain and who you truly do not want to retain. And if you take the first letter of those it happens to help you move faster."
Is it possible to have a conversation about company culture without mentioning Zappos? No, because they are nailing it. There's enough culture-related Zappos content out there to keep you busy all day, but the above chat with CEO Tony Hsieh hits on the major points. He cites research suggesing that specific values aren't important, but rather the impact comes from company wide commitment and aligning the organization on those values.
Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, shared this extensive culture deck on Slideshare and it is jam packed with lessons. He makes an interesting point early on about how to tell the difference between what are actual company values, and what are values merely printed on a poster. A great way to assess actual values as opposed to purported values, he argues, is to look at the behaviors that lead to employees being promoted, rewarded, or let go.
Lastly, our friends over at Officevibe have put together a veritable compendium of cultural videos featuring dozens of innovators and thought-leaders in the organizational culture space. If you're serious about defining, growing, and pruning your company culture, these resources are invaluble.
How have you gone about defining or building your company brand? Leave a comment or tweet @EnteloRob!
