Culture is Built in ONLY One of Two Ways

My Partner Ken and I started Nurse Next Door out of a Starbucks coffee shop in 2001 with 2 cell phones and a couple of caregivers. Within 4 years we had a company with a 1000 strong workforce and were one of the fastest growing (if not fastest) companies in the country.

But there was a problem. Neither of us actually enjoyed going to work. Yes, we owned the company. Yes, we were doing well. Yes, we were being recognized for our success. But we weren’t happy. And we weren’t happy for one reason: our culture was terrible.

It turns out that having the desire to be great to your people and build a special workplace is far different from actually doing it. As you grow, and time goes on, your culture starts to form a life of its own, and before you know it, it can become a life that you don’t like!

It turns out that there are only two ways to build culture: You build culture either by 1) Design; or by 2) Default.

By design, I mean that you architect it from the ground up. You blueprint it, you envision every little detail of what it needs to look like over the next 5 years and the plan to execute on this strategy.

By default, I mean you just let it form naturally. And this can work for a while. Until you walk into the office one day and you realize that you don’t like working there any longer. Just like Ken and I did in 2005.

Since we started our rebuild of Nurse Next Door, one where we had a fully architected culture, we have grown into the # 1 place to work in British Columbia (ranked by B.C Business) and one of the Best Companies to Work for in Canada (ranked by the Globe and Mail). And I LOVE where I work. In fact, I would consider myself to be one of the happier entrepreneurs on this planet!

In my workshop at the Health Work and Wellness Conference, I will walk you through our story on how we built our company from a place we didn’t want to be to the # 1 place to work in BC. And within this workshop, I will lay out a step by step plan for you to architect your own culture around.

Finally, In the words of Herb Keller (Founder of Southwest Airlines) ”culture is the most precious thing a company has. So you better work harder at it then anything else.”

John DeHart
Co founder Nurse Next Door www.nursenextdoor.com

Visit my blog on building culture at: www.johndehart.com