How Can You Improve Company Culture?
Emphasize Continuous Feedback
In the quest to enhance company culture, BusinessLeadership.io gathered insights from eight CEOs and Founders, who shared some of their most transformative strategies. I was honored to be included to share my perspective.
From our work at Avenue Talent Partners, we find most company cultures aren’t broken. They were never built right to begin with. I believe it starts with communication, especially feedback.
I firmly believe it’s my responsibility as a founder and CEO to create, communicate, and reinforce the culture—it’s not something to delegate to someone else. The only way to do this well is to know my value system, share it early and often, and back it up in practice.
This principle also guides our executive search work with our customers, where we encourage founders to define what they stand for while taking ownership of how it’s cultivated.
Knowing what we’re about and living it in practice makes it easier to achieve alignment. Misalignment is where problems blossom.
At the top of my ‘culture pile’ is creating a supportive environment for excellent work fueled by open communication. We do this by emphasizing continuous feedback and learning, setting expectations early and often together, and proactive communication—especially when it gets hard. Problems only get bigger when left unattended.
For example, if I want my team to care about our customers, be there for them, prioritize them, and deliver excellent service and results, I must be willing to do the same in practice. We have structured and unstructured meetings where there is safety and support to tackle problems or challenges quickly (together).
We can’t fake intentionality and care; they’re ‘baked’ into every part of our culture. This has impacted our performance, with a dialed-in team that feels empowered to use their voice, care for the customer, and raise their hand when something is off track without fear of repercussions. I believe it’s the backbone for why we have a 98% success rate and a raving fanbase of customers and candidates.
