
By Eric Sprague C & R Magazine 02/03/2025
I remember sitting at my desk one night at my cleaning restoration company, thinking about how much harder and more frustrating owning this business was than I ever imagined it would be. We had people quitting, we were plagued by employees who were not engaged in their work or the company, and my business partner, Larry, and I spent most of our days running around trying to put out fires and calm down unhappy customers. We were losing, and it hurt.
Everyone wants to work at or own a company that is winning—a place where winning is prioritized, and the team is fully bought into the idea that the company needs to excel. The problem is, this is super hard to build and even harder to maintain in the long term.
But what is a winning culture? How do we define it? How do we know if we have one or not? It’s not always so clear to everyone involved. So, we must first define what we feel winning looks like.
Define What Winning Is
Is winning having a company that empowers and builds both team members and the community as its main focus? Is it having a company that is smaller because that fits the owner’s needs and desires? Is it creating a massive business that will one day get acquired by private equity? Winning is different for everyone, so to create a winning culture, the owners and the executive team must get very clear on what winning looks like for them.
Create the Vision and Mission
We have to create a vision and mission statement that will act as a guide for everyone involved to understand where the company wants to go and how the team will need to act to achieve the goal. The mission needs to resonate with team members at all levels of the company. A mission that only benefits the owners and high-level executives will not motivate the rank and file to buy in. There needs to be winning for everyone involved to gain buy-in.
It Starts at the Top
The leadership team must embody the culture they want to see from everyone else. Employees have a highly-tuned bullshit meter, and any deviation from the mission and vision by management will be viewed as hypocrisy. Make sure the leadership team is truly living this winning culture. If they do, they will bring the team along on this winning journey. If they don’t, the chances of building the company you desire are low.
Be Transparent
It is imperative to be transparent. Where a lack of information exists, team members will create their own narratives, which is poison to a winning culture. To get everyone on the same page, you need to keep the team in the loop. I love tools like the Great Game of Business to get everyone to share in the numbers of the business, which fosters buy-in and gives every team member some skin in the game. Also, don’t hoard all the information about how the company is doing, what is going on within the marketplace, and changes that may be coming. The more we can share, the more buy-in we get.
Foster Employee Engagement
We too often overlook the ideas and feedback from our team members. Owners and managers get caught up in the hierarchy of the company and often take a top-down approach to leading, but we are missing a key ingredient for winning in this style: the ideas and input from our team. Some great ways to get input from our team members include creating opportunities for them to provide feedback. Holding an all-team “town hall” where we discuss the company and how to make it better, creating anonymous employee surveys, setting up a suggestion box, and rewarding team members whose ideas are implemented can all help. I have always loved the Steve Jobs quote: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” Our team has amazing ideas to help us win; we just need to listen to them.
Recognize and Reward Success
Everyone, on some level, seeks recognition and reward for their hard work and commitment. All too often, we just keep grinding on the next job, the next month’s revenue, and the next goal without making sure the team is recognized and rewarded for their efforts and results. To build a winning culture, it’s important to publicly acknowledge the achievements of both individuals and the team. There are so many ways to do this—employee appreciation days, contests where the team gets rewarded for reaching a company goal or giving special prizes and trophies for high performance. The rewards don’t need to be extravagant to have meaning to the team. It could be a paid day off, a small bonus, a special parking spot for a month, or their picture on the office wall. People need to feel noticed and appreciated. The more we create this type of environment, the more the team will strive to win at work.
Cultivate Accountability
Winning cultures are accountable cultures. Showing care and appreciation for team members doesn’t mean they aren’t accountable for doing their jobs exceptionally well. In fact, winning cultures value accountability above all else. Accountability and empathy are not mutually exclusive concepts. We can have both at the same time.
Holding people to a high standard doesn’t mean being cold or ruthless. I strongly believe in frequent formal reviews. The more often we meet with team members, the more likely we are to get better performance.
To build the most winning culture possible, we also need to invest time in our team. Zig Ziglar said that children spell love as T-I-M-E. I think employees feel the same way. All people long for belonging, and the more time and energy we invest in our people, the more they will want to create winning results.
Conclusion
As we all know, building a winning culture isn’t easy, but it’s worth every ounce of effort. It starts with defining what “winning” looks like for your company, creating a mission everyone can rally behind, and leading by example. From there, focus on transparency, engage your team, celebrate their successes, and hold them accountable with care. When your entire team is bought in and aligned with a sharedvision, you’ll not only see better results but also create a place where people genuinely want to show up and give their best every day. A winning culture is possible—now it’s up to you to build it.