Almost as an extension of that is the increasing belief that passion is the ‘X-factor’ in culture. My friend, colleague and business partner Yanky Fachler wrote about the need for “fire in the belly” ten years ago. Since then books such as Mavericks At Work, Poke the Box and The Thank You Economy all agree that passion can and should be the driving force for your business. Their argument is that in a world where everything is commoditised and similar, the only way to differentiate yourself is with your passion.
Since Marketing 3.0, Bookbuzz has covered a wide range of books in the HR and marketing space all touching on that subject. They include:
- Hacking Work – people taking control of their work from the outside in.
- The Talent Masters – Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers – recruit and retain your best people and your business will fly.
- Loose: The Future of Business is Letting Go: How to Break the Rules of Business – the future is not rigid but loose – loose organisations, loose management styles and loose ways of working.
- Toyota Under Fire – invest consistently in culture and you can manage any crisis.
- The great workplace – how to build it and why it matters, investment in staff will give you a six-times higher return on your share value
The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk really hit it home
for me. He would go as far to say that the next battleground for
business after e-commerce and technology will be culture. The book is
about extreme customer care (similar to “delivering happiness”
and how to use social media. What do you think he thinks is most
important for businesses, customers or staff? Giving his obsession with
customer care you would suspect he would maintain that the customers are
most important. Nope, he is adamant that your focus should be on your
staff.
And he takes a leaf out of Why work sucks and how to fix it and applies ROWE (the results only work environment) approach. No rules; treat staff as adults. He talks about the need for a Chief Culture Officer, which is not to be confused with the Chief Curiosity Office that Little Bets and Egonomics would suggest. What else does he say?
- It starts with you and you need to be authentic and set the tone (customers will smell BS a mile away).
- Make sure you know all your staff and spend a lot of time with them (one-to-one management).
- Empower your staff. He suggests giving every employee a personal £200 marketing budget.
As a start-up and as a small business, “culture as the new battle
ground” is good news. This is where you can compete with big business.
They can’t beat you on culture.
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