Culture Happens No Matter What

Once you’re out of the weeds of building the first iterations of your product or service; once you’re over the adrenaline rush of your first release; and once you’re putting yourself onto better financial footing, culture often becomes a question entrepreneurs start to think about more and more.

Culture is the unique DNA of your company. Tweet This Quote

How do you conserve (and evolve) the culture you have in your organization as you grow and bring on new employees? How do you codify your culture and bake it deep into the fabric of your company? How do you create culture in the first place? And…what is culture, anyway?

These days you hear a lot about the culture at places such as Google, Facebook or Twitter (with free food and lavish employee benefits). Or you hear about Patagonia’s culture, which quite literally sends its people surfing.

Culture exists and happens no matter what. If you design for it or not, it is always there. Tweet This Quote

Culture is all these things and so much more. Culture is the unique DNA of your company. It is what makes your company come alive. It’s the way you treat each other, the way your office looks, the things the company does for its employees and the things the employees do for their company.

Most importantly, and this is the one point you need to remember: Culture exists and happens no matter what. If you design for it or not, it is always there. You might not have thought about buying Ikea desks for your team, but those Ikea desks become part of your unique identity.

Your culture is the sum of all the small decisions you take on a constant basis. Tweet This Quote

Your culture is the sum of all the small decisions you make on a constant basis. It’s always there, so you might as well treat it as such. Culture needs constant and relentless reinforcement. If you want people to act in a specific way, keep reinforcing this behavior by living it—constantly and without pause.

You have the chance to create something very, very special. You can design and create the company you want—just be mindful about it.

This originally appeared on Pascal’s blog.