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Belief system
How to become fanatical about your culture
By Meredyth McKenzie
Smart Business San Diego | September 2008
Page 1 of 2
Russ Mann
CEO, Covario Inc.
It’s not unusual to see
employees at Covario Inc.
playing Wii, rocking out on Guitar Hero or interacting with
each other at company-sponsored events. It’s all part of the
culture that CEO Russ Mann
has created for the company.
But creating a successful culture isn’t solely dependent on
the leader; it must also include
things that employees are interested in, says Mann. And to
make sure that happens, Mann
created the Culture Club to
help plan activities for his 100-employee company, which creates software for Fortune 500
companies to boost their rankings on Internet search engines.
“You need to have willing
participants, because if the
team isn’t into the idea, then
they’re not going to execute
it,” he says.
Smart Business spoke with
Mann about the keys to creating a successful culture.
Q. What are the keys to a
successful culture?
You have to believe that culture is important. Create an
active action plan around culture, and then execute and follow through.
Some people don’t necessarily believe culture is that
important. Some people think
it’s important but don’t think
they can do anything about it,
so they don’t create an active
action plan and try to do
things once a month, and
some people will do one thing
here or there and say, ‘Oh, this
isn’t working; maybe we
should give up.’ But you have
to keep up with it.
Delegate it to the team and
make sure the team is committed to following through. I
work with human resources
and the folks on the Culture
Club and ask them, ‘What’s the
calendar of events for the next
three to six months, do you
have enough budget, and do
you need more budget? How
does this tie into our core
company values and some of
the marketing initiatives with
our new products?’
Q. How could another leader
develop a successful culture?
It’s all about the team.
I try to make it the culture that the team
wants, not the culture I
want. ... That’s not
what’s going to make
them happy to come to
work and do their best
for the client; what’s
going to make them
happy is creating a culture they want.
Another CEO might
say, ‘I want to create a
culture club,’ and the
folks there might say
they don’t think that’s a
good idea. The CEO
should say, ‘What do you
think would be a good
idea; what would you
guys like to do?’
Commit to a budget. You
can’t do all this stuff for free,
and it doesn’t have to be a lot
of money. You do have to create some guidelines.
You have to have the idea,
get the team participation,
fund it or commit to whatever
resources are required and
then back it from the senior
level, show that you have support, that the senior team supports the initiative. If you’re
going to have the front-line
team or middle management
do it, you have to still give
them support. You can’t just
say, ‘You guys go do it,’ and
then walk away and complain
about it later.
