April 30, 2015

By: Chelsea Haley, DKI Ventures, LLC

Ask yourself two questions: What does your company stand for? Where is the company headed?

Last month, our leadership team met offsite for a week to discuss company goals and direction. The result from the meeting was discovering and establishing DKI’s main purpose and company core values – definitive guidelines why we exist, how we should act as a team, and how we plan to grow and succeed.

Together, we all agreed our main purpose is to “Restore Peace of Mind.” We also agreed upon five specific guidelines to help us meet this goal in our everyday work – Five rules for every employee to follow. These five rules are also a part of our cultural fit.

Overall, our team wanted to achieve consistency. Every team member needs to be in line with the purpose of the organization and where we are headed. Employees who do not adhere to a shared corporate culture weaken the organization. It’s not your company that creates loyalty with your customers, it’s the people. Employee uniformity of beliefs and goals can make customers and clients believe in the company.

This doesn’t mean individuality is not allowed in our workplace. We encourage new ideas, but we want those individual personalities to blend, as one of our core values is “Teamwork.”

If you haven’t already done so, define and communicate throughout your organization, a few significant standards that answer the two top questions. Without coherence, how do you expect to have one goal, one direction, one purpose – that establishes who your company is?