Company culture is an essential ingredient to develop and cultivate for your team to improve. The more I’ve emphasized this, the more I’ve realized that the development of our organization had everything to do with cultural attitudes — from the top-down to the bottom-up.

But the term “corporate culture” is often misused, and it’s rarely understood.

When you think of the word “culture,” there are several words that come to mind: family, food, religion, history, traditions, beliefs and consistency.

As one definition puts it: “Culture is a word for ‘way of life’ of groups of people, meaning the way they do things. An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior. The outlook, attitudes, values, morals, goals and customs shared by a society.”

If we can define culture fairly easily, then why is “company culture” so difficult to pin down?

Here, I will explain how I see culture and its role in a company. In a future installment, I’ll explain how I built our corporate culture over the years.

What Culture is — and isn’t

When individuals think of culture, whether it’s in the pool business or any other business, they have their own understanding of what it means.

There’s good culture, and there’s bad culture. There’s a lack of culture, and there’s no culture. Too much culture and competing kinds of culture.

There are so many layers to the term and a lot of noise that hasn’t got much to do with running a business.

When you think of company culture, what do you think about? It’s a thought-provoking question that takes time to define, and is crucial in helping you develop your own.

We know that culture is distilled ultimately by the company vision and purpose — or lack thereof.

But some people have a concept of corporate culture that is limited by their own perspective. For example, employees may define a good culture through perks and time off. Employers, on the other hand, might define good culture as having staff “do as I say.” Both, unfortunately, are self-serving and not “en masse.” When it’s about “I” rather than “we,” organizations become fragmented.

It’s not just about having a nice place to work or going bowling on the weekends with colleagues. Corporate culture can be mistaken as simply the way the team interacts and the social aspect within the workplace. Company culture is so much more than that, as it involves years of practice and implementation to develop.

Instead, when a cohesive vision and purpose collide, that’s where the magic begins to happen. When your organization views itself in terms of brothers and sisters working together, that’s when the sparks fly. It’s simply when everyone is on the same page.

The way I define it for business purposes is in terms of the team that you build. It’s about the cohesiveness of your message, your vision, and about how the members of your team interact as a family. When I think of a company’s culture, I really think about how people within that organization act and how they project themselves as an interconnected unit.

Culture represents the marriage of a company’s purported values with its organization-wide practices. It is expressed in your corporation’s message, vision, mission and values.

When I look at culture, I look at the education of your team, both formal and informal. I look at the associations you belong to. I look at how you develop a like-minded perspective and what that perspective is. Culture permeates everything, including the education you give to your team — through your words and the behaviors you model. Developing a culture in itself is a form of internal training. It is the daily training you give to your personnel.

It is essentially the personality of the company, the lens through which we understand values. In fact, a company’s culture tells us how seriously people take their values. Culture can be developed and learned, but the buy-in by the team in its entirety ultimately determines the corporate culture at large. When a person walks by and there’s litter on the ground, do they bend down and pick it up or leave it where it lies? That’s the cultural dynamic within the organization.

An intentional Process

A corporate culture doesn’t just happen — it is intentionally created by the company’s principals and managers. And it doesn’t happen overnight. Similar to human personalities, an organization’s personality is complex and must be refined and developed over many years.

In considering the kind of corporate culture you’d like to build, define your personal core values. Ask your team to look at your values and what their values are. Do they align? I asked my team about my values and discussed them in detail. I asked them if trust was important and why. I asked them to define trust. I asked them how our client define trust. This is vital because these are defining words that result in action through behavior and attitudes.

It’s not easy. Building culture takes time and is expensive, and you may have to change. But your team will notice the difference. They’ll know that you care about their health and safety and their mental and physical well-being.

Next, I’ll outline what we did and what we do ongoing to cultivate and nourish our company culture.