How to create a culture of performance (positive) in your company?

Environment + Leadership + Individuals (Skills) = This is how to create a positive performance culture in your company. Thank you for reading this article! No kidding, the term “corporate culture” is on everyone's lips in respectable companies. Entrepreneurs struggle to retain talent in their organizations, and you know what? It’s normal and very motivating! If you are competing to attract the best talent to your organization, it means you have reached a level of maturity that requires special attention.

What is corporate culture?

According to Gro, corporate culture is the assembly of your company's mission, vision, and values, combined with the environment and the leadership of management. It is this assembly that creates unique ecosystems specific to each company, for better or for worse.

Gro's mission #1:

Create an environment that enables human growth, relationship growth, idea growth, knowledge growth, and both individual and collective growth.

Our vision:

To become a global leader in innovation and growth by 2030, helping over 1000 companies through technology.

Our values:

These words are everywhere: on our social media, in our contracts, in our actions, and in our hearts.

• Leadership

• Authenticity

• Transparency

• Growth

• Professionalism

And what about leadership? The entire team expects the Gro Leader to fulfill Gro's vision by accomplishing its mission with its values. It’s as simple as that… and at the same time, it’s very complex.

How to create a stimulating environment to enhance your company's culture?

This is probably where companies invest the least in their organization, and the impacts are terrible. Be careful, we are in no way a company specialized in human resources. However, in my opinion, corporate culture is primarily a question of leadership. So, how to create a stimulating environment to enhance your company’s culture? Start by defining your mission, vision, and values.

Step #1: Mission – Vision – Values

This is a very interesting exercise to do, and we can help you with it! Consistency is (ULTRA) important in the leadership of an organization. Once your “Mission / Vision / Values” (MVV) is established, you must govern your company based on what you have previously determined. As a leader, you need to be the guardian of these elements.

Eventually, like at Gro, you will have guardians who will manifest themselves and help you ensure the consistency of direction with its values… and they will also protect you from yourself.

A real company is bigger than oneself. The founder becomes and will remain for an indefinite time the captain on board… but will never be the ship! The MVV does not belong to the captain, but to the ship, keep that in mind. If you consider your company “bigger than yourself” and make your team feel that, imagine the positive impact this will have on the work environment.

At Gro, people are not afraid to make mistakes or to speak their minds… especially not to me! I am undoubtedly the most openly criticized person in my organization, and I love it. Even if sometimes it is painful, it’s the best way to grow. As Ray Dalio, the author of Principles and founder of the world's largest hedge fund, wisely says: Pain + Reflection = Progress.

Re-read my last paragraph; you will read between the lines certain values such as Transparency, Growth, Authenticity, and Leadership. I strive for these values to be felt and seen as often as possible.

Step #2: Leadership

After 16 years of experience in entrepreneurship, I can tell you that I have made easily 4 times more mistakes than good shots. It is because of these mistakes that I have understood the importance of one of the 6 functions of a company: Leadership. Leadership often remains something abstract; however, it is very simple to understand. It is rather at the execution level that it becomes complex and difficult.

Since Gro is called to intervene in the organizational structure of companies, we see all sorts of leadership: negative, toxic, inspiring, positive, etc. From my experience, a good leader is defined by one single aspect: the level of trust that their organization has in that person (the leader). The more people trust someone, the more likely they are to listen to, respect, consider, and most importantly, follow that person.

For a leader to have the trust of their team, they must be capable, in their attitude and in their role:

• To deliver the goods

• To be reliable

• To have a good vision

• To be a good communicator and a good listener

• To have control over their emotions

People will follow someone who makes them feel safe, in every sense of the word. Does your team feel that they are going in the right direction? Are your colleagues able to develop their careers with you? Do you understand and motivate them? Can they count on you?

To get a weekly pulse of our teams, we have developed a particular method of having meetings every Friday. Alternately, team members will choose from 6 emotions and explain why they feel that way, either professionally or personally.

Sad – Scared – Mad – Powerful – Joyful – Peaceful

Then, we ask them for their “Wins” and their “challenges” of the week, and finally, what they would have liked to work on. This data is integrated into the Monday software and allows us not only to know the individual mindset of Gro members but also the collective state. I can tell you that after the Christmas holidays in 2021, 75% of the team was generally depressed, so we decided to organize a day of ice fishing. We will go play outside with friends to clear our minds. THAT SIMPLE.

By being authentic and transparent in their responses, Gro's team allowed the team leaders to understand their vibe, and then make the decision and leadership to break this little melancholy. We will all come out stronger, together (Growth).

My team feels safe because they know that being transparent and authentic will lead to solutions and actions to ensure the individual and collective well-being of the organization.

Step #3: Individuals (Skills)

No matter how cool your MVV is and how strong your leadership is, if your colleagues are not aligned with you and the MVV of your company, it is a lost cause. It all begins at recruitment. During interviews, everything is oriented according to our MVV: The questions, our explanations, everything.

At the very end of the interviews, we ask very direct questions related to our values to see if the candidates are aligned with us. We focus much more on MVV than on the skills of a candidate, and so far… it has paid off!

Of 11 hires in 2021, we kept everyone but our intern (this story got me 100,000 views on LinkedIn). Moreover, our team is ULTRA high-performing, to the point that we have to put procedures in place to prevent the team from working too much. Why? Because my colleagues follow their captain (me) to achieve the vision of Gro by way of its mission, the company is bigger than us! The day my actions do not reflect our MVV, I will be told so, and that has already happened!

Clumsily, I was explaining to one of our new colleagues that I wasn’t always very professional, but that it didn’t bother me… people liked me that way. Not only did this go against the value of professionalism, but also that of growth. My two directors called me into a meeting to tell me (transparency and authenticity). I obviously immediately corrected my course.

If you think you have a “fear” of being smaller than your business and being accountable in relation to your MVV, perhaps our way of doing things is not for you. However, do not expect to have hyper-performing individuals who will support you in your business project. You will rarely get back more than what you give to your company.

If you think you have a “fear” of being smaller than your business and being accountable in relation to your MVV, perhaps our way of doing things is not for you. However, do not expect to have hyper-performing individuals who will support you in your business project. You will rarely get back more than what you give to your company.

Why?

• Because a company, is an ecosystem.

• It is the assembly of several organisms that live in symbiosis when the environment and the elements that constitute it allow.

• Gro is an environment that enables human growth.

• The growth of relationships, the growth of ideas, the growth of knowledge, individual and collective growth.

• Gro is also technology.

• Technology is the accelerator that allows for exponential growth.

• Technology is what allows better development of relations.

• Technology is what helps us find the best ideas.

• Technology is what gives us easier access to knowledge.

• And above all, technology enables collaboration between the individual and the collective.

I have taken the bet to invest everything in my team, in my colleagues, and in my partners.
To redefine the foundations of an organization's ecosystem.
Imagine all the possibilities.

#Technology is Gro.