Living Company Culture during COVID 19 Crisis

Company culture is at the heart of how organizations handle and deal with crisis. Often, when crisis occurs, an organizations strength, resolve and resiliency is tested. If your corporate culture is solid and built on a tangible foundation of values and vision, there is a likelihood the company can weather the storm. Sometimes however, crisis can reveal gaps in the company culture which can lead to erosion of morale, productivity and service.

“Companies that exhibit a winning culture, that have a strong internal compass and inspire their employees, are, we have found, 3.7 times more likely to be business performance leaders” (Berman & Thrukow, 2020).

Bain & Company visually diagram corporate culture in their blog on April 1, 2020. “An organization’s culture is its behaviors at scale—basically, what it says and does” (Berman & Thrukow, 2020). “https://www.bain.com/insights/covid-19-creates-a-moment-of-truth-for-corporate-culture/

Ensuring you have a solid company culture clearly helps the organization navigate both good and bad days. If you don’t have articulated values or a clear purpose already, creating them during a crisis isn’t a good idea. But if you have entrenched corporate guidelines that help you organize, lead, manage and interact, you a have a working compass to help through these difficult times.

Some organization have a few values that support the vision. ActionCOACH’s vision; ‘Abundance through business re-education’, is at the heart of everything the company does. This vision guides products, processes, the services it provides. This vision is strengthened buy the values it holds most important. There are 14 value points which come with individual statements that explain and clarify how it affects the way the company operates.

Here is an example of one of the points, Integrity:

I always speak the truth. What I promise is what I deliver. I only ever make agreements with myself and others that I am willing and intend to keep. I communicate potentially broken agreements at the first opportunity and I clear up all broken agreements immediately.

Here is a list of all the ActionCOACH 14 points of culture are:

Commitment                                     Teamwork
Ownership                                          Balance
integrity                                               Fun
Excellence                                           Systems
Communication                                Consistency
Success                                                Gratitude
Education                                            Abundance

At the ActionCOACH Global office and in our franchise offices worldwide we have posters all over the walls reminding us of these important values. Now that most of us aren’t working from a single office, the organization is reinforcing the culture with social media posts, during daily video calls and in the content and webinars we are creating and sharing. It focuses on value points regularly to keep them top of mind and remind us how we behave and treat each other, customers and suppliers.

To keep its culture alive ActionCOACH…

• Reinforces culture points and reminds the global community and teams consistently that the company is a collective and regardless of proximity, the values are strong connecting threads
• Reflects the culture in every activity, policy, scripts and standard operating procedures delivered
• Injects its vision and purpose in every activity and virtual event

ActionCOACH has created a video to help keep its values and purpose in the forefront. The webinars and educational digital resources and materials that have been created during the crisis are all rooted in one or more the culture points.

Brad Sugars the CEO & Founder of ActionCOACH has been on the forefront of the organization modeling the behaviors the bring the company culture to life. Leading the organization with consistent communication, creating new education materials and offering free resources to clients demonstrate the organization’s commitment to the culture he created in 1993.

When a company has a solid foundation of a clear vision and values, its culture remains vibrant in difficult times. This doesn’t mean everything will do smoothly. Perhaps your organization will face hard decisions to lay off or furlough staff, reduce expenses dramatically and change the place and way work is done daily. If your company culture is reinforced, reflected and included in everything thing it does, it can help it survive and thrive during this crisis.