Jack Daly(^)
DALY
When I think about culture, I think about how I could create an
environment in my company. An environment, a culture, where people
th at work in the company don’t g et up in the morning and say, “Oh my
God, I’ve got to go to work again today,” as though they’d rather be
anywhere else. Rather than creating that kind of environment, how
about creating an environment where the people who work in it get up
each morning and say “Hot Dog! I get to work at this company!” If I
were to summarize it, it would be “I get to go to work here” as opposed
to “I have to go to work.”
A second way of describing culture would be if I could create, as an
entrepreneur, not o nly an environment where my employees came in
and gave me their minds and their bodies, but they also walked in and
gave me their hearts. In that case, I ’d have a competitive sustainable
advantage.
I confront entrepreneurs all of the time with this challenge: what
are you doing to win over the hearts of your people? If you win over
th eir hearts, you have a competitive, sustainable advantage.
The last definition of culture, in my opinion, is that I think we have
to reinject the F word into our business—fun. Make it more fun.
WRIGHT
As an entrepreneur, what’s in it for me when it comes to focusing on
culture?
DALY
When I think about culture and the things that are in it for me,
there are four key things. One of them is revenue growth. The effect
th at culture has on businesses has be en studi ed and if we were to focus
on culture, our revenues would be in e xcess of three times the amount if
we focused on the culture side of our business. But it gets better than
that.
The second thing is the stock value of the company. It has been
shown that in culture-rich companies, stock value is actually more than
twelve times the stock value of companies deficient in the culture area
of their business. In effect, as an entrepreneur, if you were looking at