5 Spring Things that Grow Your Culture

The snow finally melted to reveal a spring-like day. The calendar called my wife and I outside to help our blueberry bushes grow fruit.

Cultivators of a positive work culture understand that there’s a season to grow people and profits. That it’s a process to develop personally and professionally. Their Work Positive goal is to bear fruit themselves and prompt similar results in those with whom they serve so the company is sustainable.

Their work focuses on these five spring things to grow a positive work culture:

Purpose

For our blueberries, the purpose is for me to step outside around 6AM each day in July and August to pick berries for breakfast. Then we want to pick more In the evenings and put berries in the freezer for later in the year.

What is your purpose at work?

How does your culture cultivate purpose discovery for team members?

First define your purpose. Your purpose is relevant to your success. It’s something you care deeply about which hooks your commitment. Align your purpose with the company purpose so you redefine work to include becoming your best self.

State your purpose clearly. Read it each morning.

As you lead others, ask powerful questions that coach them to define their purpose. Yes, the future is uncertain. Yet clarity—“Let’s go this way toward our purpose”—is essential.

Prepare

My wife and I pushed through a foot of snow to feed our horses a few weeks ago. Now we’re working our blueberry bushes. Really?

Yes, because we understand the cycle of growth. We sow now to reap later. We prepare for winter to leave and spring to arrive so we clear away the leaves and amend the soil. We fertilize and prepare for flowers, then berries.

You must prepare so your culture grows positive. The growth cycle takes time as human behavior transforms over months instead of hours. Culture development refuses to be rushed. Culture flowers first, then fruits.

Identify key culture indicators that align with company values.  Clarify them and amend team relationships to align (flower) and bear financial fruit later.

These culture cultivating efforts mature into reaping results later. You grow people and profits despite the cold adversity of the current culture.

You prepare and cultivate your culture to fulfill your clarified purpose.

Prune

Blueberry bushes require pruning for new growth. The long-term viability of the plant requires annual evaluation to cut out the overly mature, less productive canes and stimulate the new growth.

What personal habits and professional core practices of yours need pruning?

What isn’t producing the desired culture ROI and needs to be eliminated?

What new growth is emerging that needs more time, energy, and attention?

Yes, it’s challenging to prune the familiar. You choose the familiar even when its failing or miserable.

Courageously prune all culture habits that impede your preparation for aligning personal and corporate purposes on the transformation path.

Partner

Know your personal and company purposes. Prepare to grow a positive work culture. Prune all habits that are diseased.

Now it’s the season to partner.

The only way our blueberries grow is with the help of our partners, the sun and rain.

You must invest in partners for your culture to grow people and profits more positively.

You’re talented.

You’re super-motivated.

You can do everything necessary to transform your culture.

But you cannot do it all at once along with everything else you do.

Collaborate with those who commit to align their personal purpose with the company purpose. Work together with those willing to prepare for transformation. Team up with those who risk pruning their habits.

Consider inviting a Positive Culture Architect (think Rainmaker) to collaborate with you to achieve your positive work culture.

Like the sun and rain provoke growth, your partners join forces with you to grow people and profits through a positive work culture.

Persist

My wife and I know our purpose and prepare, prune, and partner with the sun and rain to grow blueberries. The fruit requires a persistent presence throughout the growth cycle to feed the bushes so we harvest in season.

So it is with you and your culture transformation. Your work grows as you feed it. You cultivate by pulling up weedy bad habits. Even when you aren’t making it rain, you find water. You persist regardless, committed to your purpose.

Your best culture lies just beyond the edge of your comfort zone.

Persist and breakthrough to enjoy the sweet goodness of looking forward to Monday as much as you and your team do Friday.

How will your work culture grow more positive this spring?

Clarify and align purposes. Prepare for growth. Prune non-productive habits. Partner with the committed and willing. Then persist so you Work Positive to grow people and profits!