Would you play a game with no rules?

If you think about any game or sport there are always rules to ensure everyone on both  teams know how things are meant to work. Can you imagine the chaos that will happen if a game of rugby or soccer had no rules?

It sounds pretty obvious that we need rules but as strange as it might sound business owners often have a go at playing the "game of business" with no rules with a rather predictable outcome when it comes to team cohesion, alignment and the achievement of the goals set.

In business this is often referred to as the culture of the organisation. An easy definition for culture is: How things work around here. For example if someone in the team makes a mistake or if someone is going through a hard time how is that likely to be dealt with? Values are the rules of the game and the foundation for a organisations culture.

A culture will always form, question is what culture? If a business owners leaves this to chance it is likely to be a aggregation of the values most team members deem important based on the personal frame of reference. Given that typical team members come from a variety of back grounds it really is a big gamble for a business owners to leave the formation of the organisation culture to chance.

Business owners have to take charge of the organisational culture, this starts by collaborating with the team and drafting the "rules of the game" or values for the organisation. This will mainly be the values that the owner holds dear but input, alignment and buy in needs to be sought from all team members.

It is however not enough to just draft a set of values and put them on the wall  or on the website. The business owners needs to actively drive engagement with the values in team meetings and discussions to ensure all team members understand and interpret the values so that it becomes a way of life, i.e. how we do things around here.

It is also a important part of building the systems of a business, i.e. it helps to guide team members to take the right decisions when the owner or management are not around.  Team members will also start holding each other accountable to living the values.

Business owners, take control of your organisational culture, playing the game of business with no rules is a huge gamble!

By Hein KRUGER
Certified Business Coach
ActionCOACH