Having a culture at the office is important. It sets the tone of each day and reminds each team member that being at work isn’t all about just the work. It’s an energy field driven by a strong set of values that gives purpose to what you do and creates an environment that makes you want to do what you do. This is what did Peter Drucker meant when he said that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” — culture rules how you act with others and how you treat your work.

Creating NU Culture

At Nuscreen, what we do defines us. What we spread through our actions day-to-day creates our company culture. And at it’s core, our company culture is rooted in genuine collaboration. Collaboration is the Nuscreen personality. It’s how Nuscreen acts and behaves on a daily basis. It’s the thing that determines if people walk in and greet each other or not in the morning. It’s the major factor in how happy its employees are. And finally, it’s the thing that determines the outcome of what we create with clients.

“Knowing is not enough, we must apply” — Some guy

Every Friday we have something called “NuTalks”, and we made damn sure that this happened every Friday. No excuses. I was the MC of these talks and would usually give out awards at the end. Awards ranged from “certificates of excellence” found at Dollarama, to hairspray, to mickeys of tequila. We’d get a member from the team — part-time, full-time, half-time, hammer-time — to conduct an informative one-hour session on whatever topic they felt was necessary and relevant to what we do at Nuscreen, because we valuecreating work for our clients based on educated decisions. Since the beginning of this year, everyone on the team, every single Friday, has had the opportunity to learn more about things like SEO, keys to becoming a better communicator, the future of mobile, User Experience, HTML & CSS, and typography.

An agency that learns together, becomes stronger together.

Keeping it Real

We’re growing — there’s no doubt about that — but the beauty of working with a small team is that everyone has the opportunity to speak up about, well, anything.

However, nobody said that keeping our culture every day was easy. Og Mandino said something along the lines of: “Men are a slave to their habits, so they might as well be good habits” — and he’s 100% right. Any agency needs to live, speak and breathe their culture on the daily, and not break, so it manifests into something real. If we let one day slide where someone isn’t keeping it real, someone doesn’t greet others in the morning, things just aren’t motivating enough, or someone is half-assing it, we’ll feel more inclined to let it happen again and we’ll never be as awesome as we want this company to be, ever. We need to walk into the office every morningready to help others, motivate others, communicate more directly, give feedback and accept criticism as a stepping stone to something better.

Why it Matters

If tomorrow, Nuscreen was bought out by a huge corporate company that stuck us in cubicles, I would personally feel much less driven. That’s why I left my old job — I felt as though there was little point in the work I was creating, and that the only values exhibited in its culture were to get the work done and then go home (unfortunately, there are so many corporate jobs out there like that). I don’t want my only motivation to be a paycheque or the weekend — I want my motivation to be rooted in the values carried out by everyone in the office, every day.

No matter where you work, each employee is responsible for spreading their workplace’s culture — and if you’re at a growing company, you’re shaping that company into what it’s going to be later on. So speak up and collaborate. Here at Nuscreen, going forward we will strive to create an environment with people that motivate each other and allow each other to succeed — a place you’ll want to work at everyday.