Culture! by Chris Carneal

DAY 33 CULTURE!

By Chris Carneal

Founder and president of Booster

@ ChrisCarneal

Iam often asked what makes Booster unique, and I respond very quickly with, “Our remarkable people. Our business model is good but not great. Our systems are improving, processes are getting better, but our people, our leaders, they are the best you’ve ever seen!” I say this with all humility and incredible thankfulness to them and their families. They make the good great and the common absolutely remarkable. If you’ve ever met Boosterthon Fun Run team members, they are remarkable. They will serve 1000+ elementary schools this school year alone by hosting an incredible two week enthusiastic fitness fun run to raise money for each school’s own needs. They are remarkable at what they do and they love the mission, the vision, the goal, and the work itself (most of it anyway.) However, when I get the follow up question, “Where do you find your people, and what do you do to get them, develop them and keep them?” I always respond with one word:

CULTURE!

They make it, they are attracted to it, they are developed by it, challenged by it, encouraged by it and fueled by it! “Culture eats strategy for breakfast!” – Peter Drucker

Strategy creates excellence. Ideas shape the future. Leaders change the world.

But culture is your primary distinctive as an organization. You have a culture, like it or not. Whether it’s healthy is another question, but your culture is alive. Culture is the environment that makes strategy and ideas even possible, and culture alone unlocks the potential of true leaders. Without a healthy culture, there is merely transactions and doing. Culture creates relationships and a place of being.

Coffee shop junkies don’t spend $4 on a caramel latte because it’s merely a better-harvested coffee bean with some cool topping but rather an entire culture that communicates a story to the consumer. In fact, as Simeon Sinek says, customers don’t buy what you sell, they buy why you do it. You culture

is your “why.”

Culture has given our organization a multiplication effect that has allowed us to grow from my basement with 1 client to 210 team members and over 1000 clients in 8 years. Without a doubt, our culture is our #1 distinctive and the #1 thing I spend my time growing. As the founder, it’s my top priority to create, protect and grow our culture. With each passing year, I spend a greater percentage of my time thinking about the culture we have and the culture we want. The environment that exists, if and when healthy, produces leaders who produce results. There are no results without the best leaders. No leaders without a healthy culture.

Booster has a few very distinct cultural attributes. Many traditions are unique to us but the principles are universal and can be copied by all, just as we

have borrowed from other incredible organizations with distinctive culture.

I emailed my team and asked them to speak into this and tell me what they thought were our top cultural principles and distinctives. Below are their responses.

1) AUTHENTICITY! but there is something remarkable about a person or culture that breeds infectious enthusiasm. Do you leave an environment more positive and optimistic than when you entered it? I want my team to be excited to come to work and enthusiastic about the day. We want our team to be fired up! I’ve never

met a boring person who changed the world.

Everyone uses this word, but let me give my definition: Be YOU. You cannot and will

not create a culture trying to be someone

else. Learning from others? Absolutely! Copying principles? Yes! But your unique abilities, passions and wiring are yours and yours alone. Leverage them! We must be true to who we were created to be and our culture must reflect this authenticity. We want to know who people truly are. Each Monday at our Home Office meeting, we discuss the priorities of the week and end with what we call “Booster Story Time.” One person a week has 25 minutes to tell their story. Usually their spouse comes and listens while they walk us through pictures of their life and memories, opportunities, and challenges they have faced along they way. Three things always happen. One, I cry. We all do. Two, we learn something about a co-worker that we never knew before (it gives them a chance to highlight their successes). And three, we leave the meeting as humans, family members—not just coworkers. Culture happens Monday morning when we are authentic. Come by sometime and watch.

2) ENTHUSIASM!

I’m authentic when I’m enthusiastic. My teachers in school used to call it hyperactive. I’m passionate and fired up about life and people and opportunity. I want to attract enthusiastic people! Enthusiasm looks different inside of different personal wirings, 3) CELEBRATION!

At Booster we celebrate well. We celebrate often. We make excuses to celebrate because when one celebrates, something magical happens. Memories form, bonds are created, friendships deepen and culture multiplies! We crowd surf team members when they get promoted. We celebrate new team members when they join a team. We celebrate the fact that the cold and long Atlanta winter of 2013 is now over by declaring 2013 the Great American Summer and giving everyone seven summer Fridays off just so they can celebrate with friends and family. On the Thursday nights before these Fridays, we host cookouts and themed nights at team member’s houses, with one primary reason: to celebrate each other.

Celebration is so central to who we are we even started a separate business that hosts corporate celebrations for other organizations. Elevate Live Events is in the business of discovering what you celebrate and helping you stage an experience to multiply this incredible culture creating practice known as Celebration! Few environments are as irresistible to an outsider or insider as celebration. So my challenge to you is pick something to celebrate and go big! Hang banners, buy your team lunch, email the entire company and affirm your team or individual team member. Celebrate!

At the center of the bulls-eye of culture creation, there is one word that defines the type of organization you desire, leaders you want and culture that inspires: INTENTINALITY. Doing things with a purpose, on purpose. What is your intent? In everything you do, maximize the time you have. Not by working longer but by being more intentional, by maximizing the moments. The days are short and they quickly turn into decades right before your eyes. “Make the best use of time,” Paul tells us in Ephesians. Time is either (in Greek) chronos or kairos. Mostly it’s chronos: time of the clock. 9AM or 10 PM. However, Paul’s use here is kairos.

The prime opportunity. Moments that matter.

Life is incredibly short. Be intentional in everything you do, say, decide or invest in. There are about 30,000 days in life. Number them. Maximize them. Create culture in the moments that matter.

What is your approach to company culture?

How have you innovatively instilled your values into your culture?

What could you do today to make your culture more cohesive?

Culture matters. More than anything else you do. If you want to change the world, start first by building a world changing culture!