You Are 'Ridiculously in Charge' of Your Company Culture

There are three owners active in the business at Wilson Lumber, of which I am one. We’re all busy with what we do so we make a habit of meeting at least once a month for lunch. This is good time spent away from the business ensuring we are all well-informed.

Generally, we spend time like you’d think we would. We’re cousins and we’ve known each other forever. So, a good bit of time is spent jabbing each other. Giving Russ a hard time about his golf game, making fun of Mark’s long hair, him making fun of my gray hair (touché).

Then we spend time simply telling each other what it is we’re working on and what our sense is of how the business is doing. Now, we have a good management structure in place, accurate financials, and good systems to check all that. Those things are very important, but there is one thing that, as owners, we cannot delegate. That is, our culture.

Henry Cloud said that for leaders, your culture is going to be either what you create or what you allow, either way you are ‘ridiculously in charge’.

I may fail the business, I may make a bad financial decision, I may forget to pay the power bill, but I must do all I can to not fail our people. The culture at Wilson Lumber can be healthy, encouraging, and challenging; or it can be depressing and toxic. Either way, we owners are in charge of it.

So, after discussion on buying that new piece of equipment or how it’s going with that customer, this is often what we discuss.

Look, we’re not perfect. Sometimes it’s the wrong piece of equipment, or sometimes it’s not going so great with a customer and it’s our fault. But even that is a culture issue. Anyone can decide how to fix a problem. Culture dictates how you go about it. This is why clear Core Values are so important.

How is your company culture? How is the culture wherever you lead, even if you’re only leading yourself? Are you intentional are does it just happen? Either way, you are ‘ridiculously in charge’!