Dear Reader, let’s go on a visit to two financial institutions offering similar products and services.

These financial institutions’ employees have all the qualifications required for their positions.

At Financial Institution “A”, the staff attend to every client with a welcoming smile. At Institution “B”, however, business is cold, and employees are brusque.

Let us explore the business implications of the differentiating cultures these two institutions have developed over time.

According to Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, “culture is your company’s number one asset” Corporate culture to the leader, can be compared to wind-is invisible. Yet, its effects can be seen and felt.

In the current competitive business environment, corporate culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage that is completely within the control of the entrepreneur.

Researchers such as former Harvard Business School professors John Kotter and James Heskett have also found a consistent correlation between robust, engaging cultures and high-performance business results (as described in their book, Corporate Culture, and Performance.

This month, we have dedicated our articles to SME leadership.

We believe that addressing the leadership question in Africa is vital to ensuring the sustainability of SMEs on the continent.

And positive organizational culture, blended with effective leadership, profitable business ideas, and qualified staff, is fundamental to success in business.

A company that lacks culture, according to a study by Paul, R., Paul, M., & Scot, T. (2006), is likely to fail in the long run.

Scaling up a business is the entrepreneurs’ dream.

With it comes opportunities for all the stakeholders: the customers, entrepreneur, and staff.

However, one problem synonymous with small businesses is how to maintain the very culture that helped it to grow.

An organization’s culture is the collection of self-sustaining patterns of behaving, feeling, thinking, and believing, the patterns that determine “the way we do things around here”.

In this article, we want to help you avoid the nostalgia for the “old days” when your culture was intact and worked owing to the smallness of the business.

Communicate Your Value Systems Always

By nature, human beings are forgetful. It is the reason why people of faith go to places of worship to renew their commitment.

This article will interest you: Building Team Cohesion: a daily puzzle for an SME leader

Similarly, whenever a leader gets an opportunity to address his or her followers, reminding them of core institutional values is a must.

If your company believes that smiling at customers is a winning cultural advantage, then talk about it regularly.

Does your culture emphasize excellent customer service or timely delivery? If this is the case, then reminding your staff is essential.

In one of its articles, MIT Sloan Management Review concurs that “it is tempting to dismiss corporate value statements as irrelevant, but ignoring them is a mistake.”

“Even when companies fall short of their aspirations, official statements still cast light on the values leaders consider critical for success”.

Keep the Winning Company Traditions

Every company has its operational blueprint: a way of making employees and customers happy and fulfilled.

Some have traditions of celebrating staff and client birthdays, rewarding excellent staff performance and customer loyalty, among others.

If this tradition has worked for you, as your business is growing, pass it onto the next generation of employees.

Build a robust cultural foundation. When erecting a multiple-storey building, engineers will ensure that the underground pillars are strong enough to carry the weight that will follow. The same must apply to your company.

If your staff believe in the vision of the company and are willing to journey with you, ensure they live by the core values. That way, when the new team joins, they will easily be assimilated.

Establish A Support System

As a leader, you should always remember that instilling a corporate culture is a process and not an event.

Your staff may have been exposed to different organizational cultural orientations before joining your company.

It is your responsibility to make them adopt your culture. And that means a well-established support system to train and explain why things are done that way here and why is essential.

Build Trust in The Team

Staff will quickly adapt your corporate culture if there is trust and effective communication between the leader and the employees.

Trust will ensure that employees will not doubt the vision, what is in the business for them, and why you want them to follow a given path.

Recommended article: How SME leaders can improve the financial wellbeing of their staff

This will equally make the culture and policy acceptability easier.

This is what Torben R refers to as creating an environment of trust that makes employees happier and work harder.

As you transform and grow your SME, develop, and nurture the set of values and traditions that will regulate the behaviour and actions of your staff.

Doing it when the business is still small is imperative, as research has shown that the bigger the organization, the more likely the company will grow cold if there is no clearly defined working culture in place.

Because at its best, your corporate culture serves as an immense source of value.

It enables, energises, and enhances your employees and thus fosters ongoing high performance.

And yet, when not clearly defined and articulated, culture can be a drag on productivity and emotional commitment, and undermine the long-term success of the company.

If your company is making strides in the competition, that’s a sign that your culture is in sync with your strategy.

Keep it up and ensure that you do not compromise on your culture because that way, your company is much more likely to deliver consistent and attractive profitability and growth results.