Good Culture is in the Eye of the Beholder

Good culture looks very different for everyone. I think so much of your view on culture differs based on where you have come from and what you are used to. Comparison kills the honeymoon period.

Good culture looks very different for everyone. What baffles me is - How can a business have people who stay with them for decades and who thrive there but also have people leaving them so burnt out and completely broken? How can the same company serve people so differently? Many businesses are labelled toxic by their leavers, we hear it a great deal. But where is the line between toxic from ‘just a bit shit’?

I have been lucky to work for predominantly positive businesses, starting off very strong at 15 working for Pizza Express, where I stayed for 10 years alongside studying and beyond. They did set the bar high for culture. 375 restaurants but I always felt like a truly valued and supported member of a very united business. This possibly left me with only one way to go from there, down.

My next business I would describe as having a particularly bad culture. Hierarchical, elitist, dictatorial and very clique. It was in its prime as a business but the vibe from day one was very off for me. I’m am admittedly a crier anyway but around that time, it became part of my daily routine. I considered many times just calling my old Ops Manager from Pizza Express and retreating to safety but instead I decided to stick it out and do my 18 months.

I was paid incredible bonuses, paid overtime every week, the brand was having a moment, it was a great quality product but it sucked so hard on the ‘looking after people’ front, in my eyes. Meanwhile, my colleagues didn’t see what I did, they seemed to enjoy it. They didn’t see people being treated badly and how immoral the company was, they had very different viewpoints to me. They were all excellent at their job and were very nice people, but just had differing viewpoints and many of them stayed for 10 years or more.

We work with some the best businesses there are in this industry, some with the highest levels of innovation when it comes to people and culture. BUT despite building a positive environment for so many of their teams, not everyone loves working with them, and that is ok.

I think so much of your view on culture differs based on where you have come from and what you are used to. I have always found the first three months of working with a new company or with a new team a total whirlwind and I experience an array of emotions and often severely dislike it at times. It takes you to get past that, and start to feel more like part of the fixtures and fittings to be able to properly judge the culture in it’s true light without as much emotion and comparison.

When challenging your own culture as an owner, it leaves you wondering what you can actually do to ensure yours is as good as it can be for as many as it can be. In this instance, good old communication (of the two way variety) is the only solution to get as close to pleasing everyone as is possible. Asking your teams for their input, asking how they genuinely view the company and what improvements they would make, and the listening to it will be a great first step. And lest we forget my favourite tool, the value of the exit interview.