I recently read a great book by Dee Ann Turner called "Bet on Talent - How to Create a Remarkable Culture that Wins the Hearts of Customers." Isn't that what we're all trying to do?  We're ultimately trying to win our customers’ hearts.

Turner makes as concise and impactful a statement as I've ever read: "People decisions are your most important decisions." We probably all know that instinctively, but to read it in black and white really crystallizes it. So often contractors treat people decisions as necessary evils: "Oh my, we just lost a project engineer? We've got meetings to attend, deadlines, and pressure. Now I've got to stop what I'm doing and hire a new one. What an interruption of my valuable time!" That thought process is so wrong-headed! People decisions are the most important decisions you can make!

Let's define culture: Culture is how we treat each other on our shared journey; what it's like to be one of us at work.How do you know if you have a healthy culture? There are a few signs. Healthy cultures have an intentional focus on both people and the culture itself. For example, McDevitt & Street, the greatest construction company of which you've never heard, required their senior executives to devote 20% of their time, that's one day per business week, to their people. Think about that! If you required your senior leaders to focus one business day a week on not just tasks, not just jobs, but people, what benefits might you experience?

Healthy cultures have terrific mission, vision, and values statements, and they live them. Everyone knows them, they discuss them, and they're taken to heart up, down, and sideways in the organization. People have positive attitudes, and they trust each other. They innovate and collaborate. Healthy cultures promote transparency, team play, cooperation, and making a difference. They show appreciation for one another, and they have a sense of stewardship about the company and its resources.

On the flipside, how would you recognize a toxic culture? In poor cultures, there's a lack of psychological safety. In psychologically safe organizations, it's OK to bring up uncomfortable things like a project badly off schedule because good contractors want to run to their problems, not away from them.

Turnover is a key indicator in poor cultures. If people are leaving you, especially your better ones, that's a very bad sign.

Toxic cultures have a focus on compliance and enforcement of rules. For example, a friend remarked to me that her daughter, who wanted to fly home for a holiday weekend, had to demonstrate that she skipped lunch that day in order to “earn” the privilege of leaving one hour early! That's an unhealthy emphasis on compliance and enforcement.

Poor cultures produce an attitude of “can't do.” I’ve talked to countless people in service industries and they’ve said, "We can't do that." What I want to know as a consumer is: What CAN you do? How can you resolve this problem? But in toxic cultures, negatives are the norm.

If you decide that you genuinely want to work on your culture, here are five things you can do:

Here's a question: Do you want to build an organization, or do you want to build people who help you build your organization? If you bet on talent and work relentlessly on your culture, you'll be able to do the latter.

Wayne Rivers is the president of The Family Business Institute, Inc. FBI’s mission is to build better contractors! Wayne can be reached at 877-326-2493, [email protected], or on the web at www.familybusinessinstitute.com.