Elon Musk ruffled feathers last year when he called Apple “Tesla’s graveyard”.

Only half jokingly, he was referring to Apple hiring the engineers who hadn’t made it at Telsa, the innovative electric car company.

Elon Musk has a reputation for demanding the highest-performance from everyone who works with him.

According to Dolly Singh, the former head of talent acquisition for SpaceX (the other company Musk CEOs), “Diamonds are created under pressure, and Elon Musk is a master diamond maker”.

It’s been reported that engineers at SpaceX, the rocket building company, worked 70-80 hours a week for 5 straight years pouring everything they had into achieving the SpaceX mission.

It’s mission, not insignificant:

“To reduce space transportation costs and enable the colonisation of Mars”

For SpaceX, the road to achieving their vision was the development of a re-usable rocket.

What most people don’t realise is that space rockets cost around $60M to build, but only $200k to refuel. Therefore, a rocket which could be reused would slash the cost of space transportation by over 99%!

Recently (December 21st 2015), after 2 prior failures at approximately $60M a try, SpaceX successfully landed their Falcon 9 rocket which had orbited space.

Under the persistent and dogged leadership of Elon Musk (who committed $100M of his own capital to the SpaceX mission), the company has taken a giant step forward to achieving it’s dream.

The question to ask now is, what makes people rally behind a company, commit their talent, intelligence and energy, withstand immense pressure and make huge sacrifices personally to drive it’s success?

Examining Elon Musk’s story reveals that passion for a shared vision and exceptional leadership are two critically important factors.

But they are not the only ones.

Today’s issue delves into the organisational values which help to define your culture and that you can use to shape a healthy, high-performing team.

And don’t worry, you don’t need to be competing with National Defense Contractors, building fully automated vehicles, reducing humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels or working to colonise Mars to do this 🙂

What do healthy organisational cultures have in common?

So you want your team to work for more than a paycheck, enjoy coming to work and rave about how fantastic it is working for your company?

These are the foundations you need in place.

6 commonalities to all healthy organisational cultures:

1. A clear philosophy about how business is to be conducted
2. A clearly defined set of values that are shared widely and lived by all
3. Communication of values and behavioural norms is seen as ongoing (not just one off process)
4. Existing employees have consistency in how they describe the company
5. There’s a leadership consistency in how the organisation treats its people and customers
6. New employees are very carefully screened to ensure fit with culture

As you read through these points, you might pick up on several common themes: clarity, communication and cultural fit.

Being clear about what you want in your culture is the starting point. That’s why in the Culture Assessment Action Worksheets, the first action step is to clearly define your company’s direction, vision and mission.

If you already have a clear vision of your ideal company culture, you might be wondering how to create it in your business.

Let’s take a look at the organisational values that can influence your culture…

Using organisational values to create culture

Determining where your company sits on the below 8 values can help you institute the type of culture you want for your business:

Area #1: Sensitivity to the needs of customers

• What processes do you have in place to listen to your customers?
• How do you coordinate this and respond to it?

Area #2: Sensitivity to the needs of employees

• What processes do you have in place to listen to your people?
• How do you coordinate this and respond to it?

Area #3: Tendency toward creativity and innovation

• Is there an active process in place to encourage creativity and new ideas?
• When are employees given this opportunity?
• What information are they provided with to ensure they are aware of focus areas and ways to help?

Area #4: Willingness to take risks

• What level of risk is your company prepared to make? (this will vary subject to different industries and customer expectations)

Area #5: Values placed on people

• How important is it to you to be described as an employer of choice?
• How will you inspire your employees?
• What are your policies in relation to parental leave, sick leave and employee recognition?

Area #6: Flexibility around hours

• How flexible around hours can your workplace be?
• Will be dictated by the nature of work that people do?

Area #7: Openness of communication options

• What communication channels do you have in place?
• Is there a rigid hierarchy around how people need to communicate or is there open access to people in the organisation?

Area #8: Friendliness or formality level

• What kind of environment do you want to set?
• Is it professional and competitive?
• Or friendly and supportive?

Any questions?

If you have questions on this topic or any others, feel free to reach me by email or set up a free one-on-one consultation session, or drop me a comment below.

Thanks for sharing!