Is it time to upgrade the culture of your team?

For many years, I obsessed over building a caring, inclusive 'family culture' in our business.

My guess is you've done something similar.

In the earlier years of my career as a business owner, a family culture was the only option I knew and aspired to create. It felt positive and inclusive.

My early career goals as a business owner included: 1) Build a sustainable flow of money from clients to support myself in business; 2) Attract and retain other like-minded people to work with me.

Building a strong family-like culture worked to achieve those goals.

My business, The Physio Co, grew from just me to firstly a small team in Victoria, Australia and, over time, a much bigger team of 150 working in 6 States of Australia.

I suspect you, too, have also worked hard to be a caring, inclusive and responsive business owner who has been interested in the lives of your employees and done everything you could to be flexible and supportive of your team, resulting in a family-like culture.

Sound about right?

Building a family-like culture was the right starting point for me and my business, but, it's not the future.

The problems I've discovered with a family culture are that it rarely results in a high-performing team.

A family culture often results in a loyal team.  A caring team. An empathetic team.

But rarely a high-performing team

Over time, as I progressed as a business owner, my next-level goals and expectations of my team became clearer.

I now want a more accountable team. Higher performing. More independent. Still loyal. Still caring. 

What is it that you want from your team?

The transition from a family culture to a performance culture, in my experience, takes time.

It's been quite a few years since the first changes from a family culture to a performance culture were tiptoed towards in our business.

Now, despite plenty more work needed for the complete transition, we have a more engaged, reliable, accountable, and independent team than ever before.

And we still care deeply about each other, our clients and our business.

What's involved in transitioning from a family culture to a performance culture?

I'll fill you in with more of that in another post, but, as a starting point, it starts with the culture of you, the business owner.

Building a strong Team Culture will get you started in building a business, and being more intentional about your Personal Culture will take you to the next level.

Keep at it,
Tristan

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