Does your business have a specific culture? Of course the answer is that it does whether it is conscious or not. For instance, at my firm we have the JW Way (http://www.jaburgwilk.com/mission-statement). It is a mission statement consisting of twenty one fundamentals. We believe that since making these fundamentals of our firm’s culture a conscious part of our firm it has improved what already was a good place to work and guided us to better hiring decisions, all of which has had a positive impact on our bottom line.

This should not be a shock, though if you ask most business owners about the culture of their company it is not so easy to put into words. Sometimes putting it into words honestly may lead to the realization changes are needed. Change is hard, but if you invest in doing so the results will reflect the time and effort.

For instance, I read last year about Incheon Airport in Seoul, Korea. It is ranked No. 1 by passengers every year. When one employee was asked “What is it? What’s so magical?”, he responded as follows: “It’s because everyone – airport and airline personnel, security, concessionaires – we all share the same vision and we all deliver the same level of customer service.” They have a culture at that airport that allows that to happen. They all are pulling the rope in the same direction.

When that happens it is no surprise that success follows. When there is culture like that it tends to weed out those who don’t or refuse to follow the culture. That is what you want because it allows you to bring on people who appear better suited to be part of the culture and thereby help improve your business.

On a side note, a number of years ago my wife and I had a pretty long layover at Incheon Airport. Still to this day it is the best (and cleanest) airport we ever have been in, which sure made that long layover easy to make it through.