The Power of People (Why We Value Culture Part 3)

If you missed the first and second installments in our culture series, we suggest you read those and then come back to this one.

We’re wrapping up our Why We Value Culture series with the final building block of a strong culture: people who believe in, own, and live the company’s values.

When you’ve established solid core values and incorporated platforms to motivate people to behave in ways that align with those values, you’ve laid a strong foundation for a healthy culture. Individuals who fully embrace and live out those values every day are what will sustain that culture. When there are groups thoughtfully built into the fabric of a company (both formally and informally), sustaining culture becomes second nature.

We have three key groups of Thinkers who champion bringing our culture to life and sustaining it: Spirit Ambassadors, the Feedback Team, and Core Services.

SPIRIT AMBASSADORS

Picture this: You’ve had a rough day. You’ve been running from one meeting to the next and haven’t even had time to catch your breath. You finally sit down at your desk, take a deep breath, and discover a thoughtful, personalized note and your favorite snack waiting on you.

Sounds like magic, right? Not quite. It’s our Spirit Ambassadors in action.

While this group leads the charge on planning office happy hours and holiday celebrations, this band of caring individuals takes your traditional “Party Planning Committee” to the next level. Truly championing our core value of supportive relationships, Spirit Ambassadors ensure all Thinkers feel taken care of and seen. This extends to celebrating milestones in our Thinkers’ lives by planning wedding and baby showers, featuring themes that are perfectly tailored to the guests of honor.

Maybe they are magic after all.

FEEDBACK TEAM

In the pursuit of our value of continuous improvement, we also have a Feedback Team at Think Up. From sharing resources to hosting training sessions, this group ensures all Thinkers are ready (and eager) to help one another grow through an exchange of effective feedback. At Think Up, we believe this open and successful dialogue is one hallmark of a strong culture. To read more about creating a culture of feedback, check out this series of articles on our site.

CORE SERVICES

Finally, our Core Services team is our cultural backbone. This team of individuals helps keep all of us moving forward by being the first line of defense for Thinkers with a question about insurance, an IT issue, or anything and everything in between. Core is always working behind the scenes to keep all of us at Think Up strong, demonstrating what a caring, supportive culture looks like with their everyday actions.

Core Services also works to create a sense of community at Think Up. When we began working from home last March, this team scheduled impromptu coffee chats and lunches for anyone with some free time to log on and connect with one another. They also help connect us to our local community. They take the lead on planning some of our most rewarding cultural activities, including our involvement in the annual Hands On Greenville (HOG) Day and support of our local arts scene through our partnership with The Warehouse Theatre.

 

That concludes our Why We Value Culture Series! We hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into what makes Think Up truly special: our culture – built on a solid foundation of clearly established values, strategies and structures that communicate and reinforce those values, and groups of people who live those values and bring them to life every day.

 

 

RESOURCES

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/toolkits/pages/understandinganddevelopingorganizationalculture.aspx

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