Creating a 'Winning' Culture

When taking over a new leadership post, there's nothing more important than to create an environment with the proper attitude, says Song Woo, award winning executive in the staffing industry.

"The great thing about being a leader is that you are empowered to set the attitude of your office, to create a certain culture if you will," Woo points out. "Sure, every company has a certain philosophy and mission that drives the objectives of each business. However, from company to company you can see distinct subcultures that drive each business; this is the culture that I'm referring to," Woo adds.

Like a thumbprint, every business is different in this manner. Nonetheless, the one common theme you'll see in high performing companies is a winning culture, states Woo. It is crucial to develop a winning culture right from the start, Woo urges, and the foundation for a winning culture starts with the right attitude.

Song Woo, President of Lighthouse Management Group, Inc. (http://www.lighthousemg.com/), offers these tips:

-- Set high goals. Do you think Tiger Woods goes into a golf tournament
shooting for second or third place? Of course not. He plays to win.
So should you. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's the end of the
world if you don't win or reach your goal every time, but if you set
low standards, you are never going to maximize your full potential.

-- Create a competitive environment. Competing also becomes habit
forming. The more you compete, the more you want to compete. It's
difficult to create a winning environment if you're not challenged or
if competition is nonexistent. Most of the people we hire into our
company are highly competitive individuals. So why not feed off this
trait in a positive manner? Challenge your team. Challenge them in a
way that fits their personality, and have fun with it. For example, at
one point our sales started to hit a lag for a couple of weeks where we
weren't hitting our weekly goals. So I challenged the team. The
challenge was if we exceeded our goal I would buy lunch for the team at
the end of every week in which we exceeded our goal. On the other
hand, if we did not, they would buy me lunch instead. It wasn't a
one-sided challenge, I made sure they had something at stake as well to
get their competitive juices flowing. Sure enough, after a couple of
weeks of them having to fork out some cash to buy me lunch, we started
exceeding our goals consistently once again. This example is nothing
earth-shattering or ingenious, but it is a good fun example to
illustrate what a little competition can create.

-- Keep setting new standards. Hitting milestones are great, but don't
feel like you can let up once you meet your goal. Continue to
challenge yourselves. Do you think the Indianapolis Colts are content
with winning the Super Bowl last season? Probably not; their goal this
year is to repeat. That is the mentality you need in order to sustain
growth. Don't be complacent.

There is nothing worse than a losing mentality. In sports, nobody wants to play for bad teams because of the losing culture that surrounds their organization. It's the same in business. If you accept mediocrity, Woo says it will manifest itself down to the rest of the group and your team will settle for mediocrity. If you don't want this to happen, Woo advises to constantly drive a winning attitude. As Vince Lombardi put it, "Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing."

Source: Lighthouse Management Group, Inc.