In a discussion I had with a CEO recently, he asked me about how I would build culture of the team, and the organization. “What’s your vision for what great culture should be, and how do we attain that?”

In my Linked In profile, I state my business values immediately – “Put the Customer first. Deliver excellence. Value your people. Do what you say. Together we succeed.” These values are how I manage my work life and I hold my teams to the same expectations – but that can’t be completely independent of the company’s culture.

The answer to the corporate culture part of that question is a difficult one. I don’t think it is possible for someone new to come in and create a new culture vision for a company. There are two main reasons for this.

First, in my experience, culture is primarily driven from the senior management of the company. If one is trying to build a different culture than senior management wants, you are likely to fail since those efforts won’t be supported at the highest levels.

Second, coming into a company with an established culture I want to be respectful of the culture that they have leveraged to make the company successful so far!

So, I re-framed the question for myself – “I started my own company today, what values would I want the company to have?” I understand that it would likely evolve over time, but this is what I would start with:

Make an Impact – To yourself, your team, your colleagues, your company, your customers, your community.

Have Fun! – Work can be fun. If you enjoy what you do, positively impact your customers and enjoy the people around you, you can’t help but have fun! I would want people to want to come to work every day and if it is a fun place to be, then it is easy.

Always Be Learning – Continual learning makes us better. Never stop learning about your customers, yourself, technology, history, business and whatever else intrigues you. Learning helps you grow, stretch, extend, and most importantly, understand different perspectives. Learn from mistakes, they teach you valuable lessons. Expand your horizons and improve your creativity.

Be Committed – To the success of our customers, our business and our team members. Not only are we in it together but we are “Committed Together.”

Innovate – We are building this company because we think we can do something better than how it is currently being done. Sure, minor improvements add up and we should be doing them constantly. However, great impact and great success come from doing things differently. Use your creativity and experience to make quantum leaps, take risks, think outside of current norms. You will never know what you can achieve until you try.

Find Balance – My best work and my best experiences come when I am balanced – intellectually, spiritually, physically, and psychologically. There is no doubt that to be successful takes a lot of hard work, but that needs to be balanced with those other things that are important to you and your being.  Find and promote balance.

There you have it, the culture for Mark, Inc.!

This was a very interesting exercise for me and I encourage you to try something similar. I expect it will help you distill down what is important to you in a company and team culture – it certainly did for me!

What would your culture look like?