Big Culture, Big Pay-off

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Just got back from the E2 Detroit event at Wayne State University and was most impressed with the Opening Keynote Presentation by Lisa Stern, founder and President of Big Communications, Inc., talking about building the right culture for the success of one’s company. It was very refreshing to hear from a business owner who “gets it” when it comes to the importance of the right culture to drive business performance. Some highlights from her talk:

• When the company grew to about 25 employees (it’s now just over 100 employees), she and the rest of the leadership team realized they needed to take a step back and think through what made the Big Communications work environment so special so they looked at the qualities of their top performers to identify the values that seemed to make them stand out.
• Those values were good communicator, trustworthy, detailed, collaborative, positive, creative, solution oriented, kind, and champions of change.
• They realized that these were the values they wanted to emphasize as the Big Communications culture.
• Over the years, Lisa, who personally interviews every candidate, has improved her behavioral-based interviewing process to be able to solicit information from candidates to inform her and other BC hiring managers on how well the candidate embodies and has demonstrated these values in prior work.
• In June 2008 magazine publisher Meredith acquired Big Communications and Lisa believes that BC’s culture made it highly attractive to buyers.
• When they evaluated potential suitors they were adamant about making sure there was a cultural match – similar values.
• They had three criteria the buyer had to meet: collaboration, control, and culture. They had to agree to a collaborative approach to joining together and that they gave Lisa and her team control over the BC culture.

So now it’s a $20m business and Lisa attributes that to their values. “Values make you invaluable,” as she pointed out. Nice return on all that touchy-feely stuff.