Culture: There is so much more to it than meets the eye

What if I told you the easiest and to me best analogy to explain what culture is that “Culture is an iceberg. There’s so much to it than meets the eye.”

That really resonates with me and my team. It is something that must continually be monitored, mentored, developed, with constant reinforcement of super amazing people, process, tools and technology.

One of our team members Julie Plummer from KYT Corporate did an excellent blog topic on culture trends and she specifically gave her thoughts around the importance that people/team members/employee’s feel connected to the company and its cause. Since our cause is all about helping drive a culture of learning and helping individuals improve their employability skills its extremely motivating for me to be passionate about sharing our cause- if we focus on always trying to get better, we will. Our culture is all about getting better and our employee’s want to continue to grow as well.

Back to the “there’s so much more to it than meets the eye” in my analogy around culture. With my thirty-five (35) years of leadership experience one thing I have learned is the workforce, its landscape, working environment constant changes, requires three important skills: Communication, more communication and then yes, more communication. That is right – you develop your plan, share it, reinforce it, then go out and evangelize it through every communication method (i.e. newsletter, one on one’s, team meetings, all hands company updates, and then some) possible.

Then it’s about letting your leaders lead, empower your teams to take risks (calculated) from time to time, and to always be learning while trying to get better at what we do. I feel blessed to have the teams we do working with corporations, school districts and those adult learners going through our IT certification pathways, it reminds of why we do this and reinforces our culture too.