In today’s business world, culture is everything. It is the single most enduring statement in business that a company with a positive culture will always trump a company with a negative (toxic) one. The short-term gains of a company that may be able to manipulate employees into working harder or faster will never win out against a company that is able to inspire their employees into driving the business forward. I’ve personally worked at both of these types of companies, as I’m sure you the reader have also had your fair share of experiencing both positive and negative cultures.

While a good culture can’t really be distilled into simple tips, it’s always a good idea to actively demonstrate on working towards a common goal of building the company up and understanding your place in both it and the world. I’ll share with you some of my personal favourite tips I’ve gathered over the years.

The eponymously titled book by Simon Sinek holds many key concepts as to what creates a good company culture. Simply put, it’s all in the title. If a company knows and can clearly articulate why it exists, and can actively demonstrate exactly what it is doing to positively serve humanity, a good company culture can be built. Sinek illustrates that the greatest companies are not built around the sole purpose of profit, they are built around the purpose of championing a cause, and it just so happens that the one they have opted to championing makes them money. Sinek seems to hint at this “incidental profit” as a matter of articulating the reason a company exists. He cites Apple as being a clear market leader in this regard. Closer to home, articulating why an employee should follow a given set of instructions plays a key role in creating these cultures. Try showing the employee the context and their impact of performing a job well (their why), and you may see a marked improvement in culture and results.

This immortal line does not come from a book, but rather from a university speech I attended many years ago. In business, most companies tend to focus on the bottom line as main driver. The truth is, profit is the outcome of hard work, and hard work only comes around through being able to align people to work towards a common goal. Once they do that, many of the political elements of workplace relations disperse, as people start to dig their heels in. One practical way to demonstrate that profit is not the goal is to mention that bonuses and salaries are simply an outcome of working hard in the moment. When employees can work in the moment, the culture improves substantially.

Lastly, and probably the most rewarding of all these mantras is a simple phrase I heard from a great company I recruited for. Their CEO had a mantra that was shared to all employees. It was simple; “all care, no pressure”. The simple phrase may be translated to something akin to “take absolute care with what you are working on, work hard on it to make it the best you possibly can make it, but there is no pressure to do so”. Despite being a small company, their business was booming, and they were able to continue to maintain that culture with each new hire.

In practical terms, the best way to create a company culture is to simply create mantras that are your own and true to you. If you don’t borrow them from anywhere, and they spring up from some internal brains trust (a la Steve Jobs), you can start to build a company-wide culture, and eventually look to build the culture to something truly remarkable.