It’s the first essential ingredient:  Caring.  If a team commits to building a culture together, it all begins with deciding what they care about the most.  More likely than not, the team leader sets the tone by demonstrating that he or she genuinely cares about the others on their team.

An unsolicited, shining example of this emerged this week and is depicted in the accompanying photo.  Sean Petersen has been working at building a performance culture in Atlanta, one grounded in Safety.  He has determined that “Safety is the Priority” and “Quality is the Standard”; then he decided on his own to make those expectations highly visible and shared.

It is working.  A formerly weak view of safety at this branch, which Sean inherited, has been changed to one where it has clearly become a Priority.  That focus in turn translates to the work itself; not surprisingly, client retention has improved dramatically and the branch is growing.  All because caring creates culture and everyone working at the branch embraces it.

Caring begins a virtuous circle of awareness and mutual accountability.  This is captured in the shared belief that “Accidents are Avoidable”, not something just to be expected and managed.  If you care enough to look after one another, you are able to see and prevent accidents before they happen.  If a team doesn’t care, no one will ever notice; it’s a terminal disease.

This original poster captures three critical ideas that, taken together, create a performance culture and generate a force to be reckoned with.  It’s evidence of caring at its best.  What do you care about?