At last, the final pillar, and my personal favorite. Over the past year and a half I’ve discussed our Pillars of Culture, which our team abides by:
1. Make quality personal (June ’23)
2. When things go wrong, don’t go with them (July ’23)
3. Do the right thing always (Aug. ’23)
4. Create a tone of friendliness and warmth (Feb. ’23)
5. Check your ego at the door (Sept. ’23)
6. Honor commitments (Oct.-Nov. ’23)
7. Practice blameless problem solving (May ’23)
8. Listen generously (Feb. ’24)
9. Go the extra mile (June ’24)

Falling at #10 is the most important one: “Keep things fun.”

We believe that by having a loose, friendly, and in most cases, funny atmosphere we all stay happy. When you’re happy, it’s easy to adhere to the nine pillars above. We decided early on that if we were going to make a run at building a business, we ought to have fun doing so, and those that join us in our journey deserve the same.

This mini-series of articles was derived from the first article titled “Culture is essential”, where I referenced Pillar number four. After submitting it, our editor said, let’s see the other nice pillars! At first, I was a bit closed off to the idea, I chose to share one, but was I ready to share them all? Then I thought, that’s exactly what the NHLA is for. It’s for learning, sharing, and growing in the Green Industry.

Culture is a term that gets used loosely and broadly. It’s easy to say you care about good company culture, but what are the things that bring that to life? I implore you to take the time to figure out what is driving your culture. If the culture is positive and enthusiastic already – identifying the driving forces should be easy. Harness them, make your team aware of them and it will only reinforce what you have in place. If your culture isn’t strong and needs to improve then identify what is driving it down and figure out an action plan to set in place with your team to begin to work on the areas that are making it so.

As I said in the first article, I know that sharing our approach feels like I’m giving the secret recipe away. And maybe it is. But what I do know is that being consistent with this approach is what is difficult. Writing down ten pillars is easy, embodying them is another story. It’s a relentless battle to remain true to them, even in the most difficult times to do so, but the more the team bares down and “sticks to their guns” or pillars in this case, greatness will be achieved!

by Andrew Pelkey, NHLA President; COO, North Point Outdoors