What makes an organization successful? More importantly, what makes your organization successful?

All too often, many CEOs and leaders are focused on what their organizations are doing wrong. Instead, they should be focused on what they could be doing differently – factors that impact the organization from the ground up. An Inc.com article recently released an infograph based on a survey of Inc. 500 CEOs. As part of this survey, these CEOs identified one of the biggest obstacles to growth was finding enough winning employees. On a scale of 1 to 5, ‘finding talented workers’ ranked an impressive 3.31. Other factors that were cited for hindering growth included ‘keeping up with demand’ (2.67 out of 5.0), and ‘domestic competition’ (2.55 out of 5.0). Wouldn’t we all have to agree that the task of overcoming these obstacles doesn’t rest solely with the CEO?

Consider companies like Zappos.com, Whole Foods, and Starbucks. What do they all have in common? The answer is simpler than you think – a corporate culture that supersedes corporate strategy. In order to achieve sustained growth and success, an organization has to place strong emphasis on its greatest resource – its people. One of the primary focuses of any organization (including its goods and services) is the development of a positive and vibrant corporate culture. A strong and vibrant culture is a powerful catalyst for any organization, one that will help it realize its goals. Below are some benefits to a strong corporate culture (as detailed in a Fast Company article):

  • Focus: aligning the entire organization toward achieving its vision, mission, and goals.
  • Motivation: building higher employee motivation and loyalty.
  • Spirit: shapes employee behavior at work, enabling the organization to be more efficient and alive.

So how do you start developing the winning culture? Do you start holding company retreats to teach/implement a new culture? Do you redesign your corporate culture, processes, and frameworks from the ground up? Do you go on an organization-wide witch hunt to weed out the weak performers? Of course many of you would agree that this seems a little harsh. One way to tackle this would be to start at the beginning – interviewing and hiring. What mistakes are organizations making that are jeopardizing the growth and development of vibrant culture? All too often managers focus on resumes and interviews, and forget to initiate the new hire into the corporate culture.

To see what other “deadly sins” you might be committing, read the 7 deadly Sins of Hiring from Vision-Spark.

VisionSpark is the Talent Planning and Executive Search Firm of Alec Broadfoot and Adam McCampbell. For more news and updates, follow the conversation at @Hire4Impact.