What It Means to be a Superhero

A Company Culture of…Superheroes

It’s no surprise that company culture matters, but are you doing things to bring your unique culture to life, day in and day out?  If not, you’re missing out on a big (and fun) opportunity.

But first, a little context. Corporate culture is obviously much more than your mission statement, value statements and whatever inspiring language is used in the employee handbook. Your culture should be unique to you and it should naturally reflect how you chose to interact with each other in the workplace. And culture definitely matters because your employees are paying attention.  

We are just one example, but we love our culture and wanted to share what works for us. So, here are a few tips and some examples of what makes our culture unique, meaningful and fun for us:

Connect your culture to your business strategy. Our business strategy is to be a national leader in device lifecycle management. We recognized early on that we solve a lot of problems for our customers and we feel really good about that. In fact, when we help a school system or a company manage their devices, our entire team feels like we helped save the day. We actually feel like device superheroes. So, while we stay focused on our business strategy, we make it more meaningful by viewing ourselves as superheroes. It’s no arrogant. It’s real and it’s fun! 

Use human language. We’ve also learned that people have a hard to recalling fancy corporate speak, especially when it relates to vision, mission and value statements. We keep it simple and we use real human language. Our mission statement is Keep Life Moving. That’s it. Every employee can remember that and understand what it means – working with our customers and solving their device lifecycle issues helps them do what they do. We do help them keep their lives, and organizations, moving. 

Culture can be tangible and fun. On every employee’s first day, we have a short ceremony where the new employee is presented with his or her own actual superhero figurine. We read a custom description of that person’s skills and super hero abilities. While reinforcing our brand and mission, it’s more a reflection of our fun culture. 

Our technicians also wear branded shirts that we change up from time to time. Our current shirt also reflects our superhero culture:

TECHNICIAN (tek-nish-uhn) noun

A person who resembles heroic behavior, by repairing the electronic devices people depend on every day; Someone who keeps life moving.

Synonyms:  hero, superhero