Fast Lane
The place to be
How to create a company culture that makes people want to stay
By Carolyn LaWell
Smart Business Indianapolis | February 2009
Page 1 of 2
Andy Medley
president, Trace Communications LLC
Andy Medley has seen
one too many executives
model a culture after
that of another company and
then watch it fail because it
didn’t fit the organization.
To eliminate that potential
problem at his three companies, the president of Trace
Communications LLC and his
partner, Scott Hill, decided to
separate their companies from
under one roof. That transition
left them with the challenge of
redefining a culture for the 35
employees at the printing company, which helps newspaper
customers generate revenue.
“The initial thing was looking
at what are the things that are
most important to us and what
do we want to hold true,”
Medley says.
Smart Business spoke with
Medley about how to implement a corporate culture that
will work for your company.
Q. How do you create a
company culture?
Figure out what you want and
figure out what you think is
going to make the business do
well. Make it a place where people are going to want to work.
The first step my partner and I
did was sit down and say, ‘Let’s
create an environment that, if
we were in the marketplace
looking for a job, we would pick
this place. What types of things
does that look like?’
After you decide that, it’s got
to fit you. It needs to fit your
personality. It needs to fit the
strategy for what you’re trying
to accomplish.
The easiest way is to look
around your company and
get a good sense of what
motivates them and what they like about the company.
Empowering employees and
educating them on how they
can affect the company positively or negatively is the first
place to start. One of the
employees brought me
research on dress codes, and
basically he was trying to get
me to change the dress code.
We sat down and talked, and
he gave me a proposal. I read
it and said, ‘Yes, this makes
100 percent sense.’
This is where the fit comes
in. He and I are agreeing that
this dress code works.
But why does it work?
Let’s explore the reasons that we think that
it’s OK for us to dress
this particular way.
It’s something as simple
as that.
Q. How do you
implement a cultural
change?
It’s little bitty steps that
are slowly making
change. If I came in and
changed the way we did
business and changed the
way we interacted, it’s
not going to work. People
are going to come in and
see it as fake.
You try and move as
quickly as you can, but not so
fast that people feel like it’s out
of control or they don’t have
any say in what’s getting done.
You can’t just step in front of
people and say, ‘We’re going to
change this, this and this.’
The one thing to recognize is
that it wasn’t perfect at first.
You’ve got to be comfortable with the fact that when
you go into it, you’re going to
make some mistakes, and
things aren’t going to be well
received.
