The Ulimate Culture
ITS ABOUT DNA, NOT RESUME.
By Erika MacLeod and Stacey Cowperthwaite
TulipMediaGroup.com
Contents
Copyright 2020
by Erika MacLeod and Stacey Cowpertwaite Published by: Tulip Media Group
TulipMediaGroup.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system., without written permission from the publisher.
ASIN B08CRZLZCD
Printed in the United States of America.
Forward
BY ANDY BUYTING
FOUNDER & CEO, TULIP MEDIA GROUP
There are few things I believe in more than a strong company culture. Culture is a defining element of any organization with the ability to make or break success. In this regard, I think an organizations culture trumps pretty near anything else.
I was thrilled when one of our partners, Heidi Heutner, challenged our team to write a book. Acting and thinking like entrepreneurs (one of the five core values youll read about in this book), Stacey and Erika stepped up and decided to become published authors. Together, they wrote this book and, personally, I could not be more proud of what theyve created.
I think this is a wonderful story of our journey and our culture here at Tulip Media. Stacey and Erika have been able to share their insight with the outside world. As a company, we leveraged our own talent of publishing to bring this grand project to fruition.
I was first introduced to the concept of company culture, how to discover it, create it, and cultivate it when I joined Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) back in 1999.
When I joined EO, I learned a lot about business from my peers as well as various thought leaders. One of my goals in joining that organization was to be accepted into an education program called Birthing Of Giants (BOG). This was a three-year program held at MITs Endicott House in Boston. Here, I met Verne Harnish, the founder of EO and facilitator for the BOG program.
V erne talked about the importance of company culture, which is defined through a companys core values and core purpose, or reason for being. That concept really stuck with me. I started to think about the culture I had in my company at the time in the retail home and garden space. Drawing upon Vernes teachings as well as those of Jim Collins, I remember coming back and writing up the core values for the company. Twenty years later, I still remember those core values, exactly as they were originally written. Those values were instilled into our organization and completely transformed the culture of my company at the time.
Over an eight-year period, that company grew to 125 employees, and every employee could recite the core values like the back of their hand.
Steve Jobs says that your company culture is the one competitive advantage that your competition cannot take away from you. It cannot be replicated because no other organization can create the exact culture that you have.
Denise Lee Yohn, in her book Fusion, talks about how core values, designed to create internal culture, should be a direct reflection of your companys external brand. This fusion between core values and your brand creates total cohesiveness between your companys internal culture and its external brand. This is how some companies develop resilient brands that remain strong and constant through time.
A quick litmus test for cohesiveness between culture and brand was put forward by a good friend of mine, Ken Sim, founder of Nurse Next Door. He draws out three tiers to the question of who can define your core values. At tier one, can your leadership define your core values? At tier two, can your employees define your core values? And, finally, at tier three, can your customers define your core values?
Tier three is interesting because it takes the test to a deliberately higher level where you are communicating your core values through your brand. If the answer to all three of these questions is yes, this indicates that you have total fusion between brand and culture. I find this exercise very fascinating.
Another inspiration to me in the development of our culture was Jack Daly. When I first met Jack, he challenged me by asking the question, Is your company culture by design or by default?
Every organization has a culture like an open field. You can either choose to cultivate a beautiful garden or you can just let it grow over with weeds. Its up to you. The interesting thing, though, is that you can create a beautiful garden, but if you dont tend to it all of the time, it will eventually be taken over by weeds. It is equally as important to nurture your culture as it is to grow it.
Thats the analogy I use when I look at company culture, recognizing that an organization needs to create its culture by design and nurture it. Remind people, keep that culture top of mind all of the time, or else it will grow over with weeds.
I made the conscious decision after that day with Jack to create my companys culture by design and to not let it happen by default. Years later, after starting Tulip Media from the basement of my house, I landed 12 new contracts in one week. These were all with Client-Partners looking for the unique set of services Id developed. Lo and behold, that was enough to launch the idea I had into a new business, but I soon realized the amount of work would be too much for just me. I prepared to hire my first employee.
Even though I was only a team of one at the time, I sat down and defined exactly what I believed my core values were. What were the things that I valued right down to my core? I listed out five of them and went out to hire my very first employee. This turned into a second employee shortly after, then a third, fourth, fifth, and so on. My company was growing, and the best thing was that our company culture was by design, entirely based on these core values.
Our core values have evolved over the last six years, but the essence of them has stayed the same. Our core values remain centered around the companys original name, Carle Publishing (named by my then four-year- old daughter, who drew inspiration from her and her brothers names: Carter and Leah), when I captured those initial 12 contracts. Our five core values, spelling out the acronym C.A.R.L.E., inspired Stacey and Erika with the content for this book. Although weve since rebranded, our values have stayed true to our core and pay homage to our humble beginning.
Our five core values are very much alive and well inside the company. In fact, we review a different one every single morning as part of our daily huddle. As an organization, we hire, coach, evaluate and even fire people based on these five core values. We all recognize that we have created something special and now we need to tend our garden to ensure that it flourishes for decades to come.
I am very proud of this book, written by two of our original team members. I remember when I hired both Stacey and Erika (employees number 2 and 4, respectively). I tend to put new employees through the ringer with a grueling recruiting process because I want to ensure were hiring the right people who will fit our culture.
I knew Stacey was the one when, after learning about my company, the values I had written and my vision for the future, she essentially told me she was showing up to work on Monday morning, whether she was hired or not.
Erika was so invested in our companys culture and vision that during one of her last interviews, she asked, if she was offered the position, would it be too late for her to take part in the current round of employee stock investments that we were closing shortly thereafter? She was ready to not only invest her time and energy, but her money into the company as well!
