The latest installment of the #TorontoHR series offered a tactical, practical guide to aligning organizational vision with an enterprise talent management strategy for companies that are growing.
We were so excited to welcome Christine Song, VP of People and Culture at Mindful Snacks.
Christine offered glimpses into the culture playbook she's adopted and evolved during her career to ensure new recruits, recently merged employees and long tenured staff are all on the same page.
As Christine mentioned, whether your business is funded by a healthy injection of VC funding, a planned merger or acquisition, or just plain organic growth, you’ll first need to establish a few strategic plans to ensure your growth is managed the way you want your business to grow.
While growing can be exciting and mean increased brand recognition, perks and team building events, there are inherent stresses.
Communication gets lost in the shuffle, loss of cultural "identity" through M&A is possible, and the daily effort to reinforce the standards of behavior that drive performance for your business can take a back seat for more "important" issues.
In the end, employees always feel the most pain. It’s up to leadership to ensure you prepare your employees and the company for growth that will come in one form or another.
As Christine so passionately described, it's imperative to take care of your culture. From the beginning.
Here are 5 pages Christine says your culture playbook must have when it comes to how you want everyone in your company to think, act and interact.
- Define it.
- Share it.
- Own it.
- Base all your decisions through the integrity of your culture and when in doubt, review it all over again.
- Never lose focus - Growth will be easier and less painful if you focus on your culture while growing.
Our next meetup will be the Real Cost of Jerks on June 21st where we'll welcome Daneal Charney (not a jerk!) from MaRS. Register here!
