In 2019, we made the hard decision to get rid of our office and make our company 100% remote.
At the time, people thought we were nuts... fast forward a few months, COVID hits, and everyone thought we were geniuses... or just lucky (they called us geniuses to be nice, lol).
Fast forward to today, and out of thousands of candidate companies from around the world, we were selected for the 2024 Inc. Magazine Best Places to Work! I am super excited for our awesome team at Signature Athletics for earning this honor and want to give a big shoutout to all the other amazing companies on the list this year!
When we decided to move to a remote-first workplace, we knew we needed to over-invest in figuring out what drives culture on a team. Our core thesis is: if you are a good person/leader, you will attract good people and build a good culture. But if you want to build a GREAT culture, you have to do it on purpose.
More and more, I am convinced that the Culture by Design framework I have been co-developing with Barry Deutsch is a game changer.
Here are the basic building blocks:
---> A clear purpose-driven vision that is constantly reiterated by the daily work, talked about by everyone on the team, and celebrated/shared with gratitude for being able to do something we are truly passionate about every day.
---> A highly selective vision/values-driven hiring process, with a clear culture anyone could regurgitate/explain to a friend, and a definition of the non-negotiable in the culture. Reading/reiterating these definitions is built into weekly meetings and celebrated as "winning standards" that we all believe in.
---> Time, consideration, and a framework/forum for radical candor and meaningful conversation by design. We do this through our Culture by Design meetings where we deep dive into culture monthly for 90 minutes with every departmental team. We also do this in our weekly EOS Worldwide L10 huddles, Quarterly Rock Planning, and Annual Planning meetings.
I have to shoutout some instrumental folks starting with everyone on the Signature Athletics team, Maddie Lewis Soviero, Kris Cox, Jay Greyson, Kimberly Pope, and Vistage Worldwide, Inc./Vistage Florida for helping me to sharpen my axe as a CEO and always encouraging me to stay true to prioritizing our people/culture.
If you are interested in learning more about what makes up a world-class remote-first culture for your team, feel free to DM me! I believe in this work and want to see more companies adopting a purpose-driven remote-first culture!
#culture #sports #team
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