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The Once and Future C&F - C&F Now
culture. So we set about reverse-engineering aspects of a great culture. You can tell a lot about a company’s culture by observing people at an office party. Do people look like they enjoy being together – or are they checking out the exits? Since Halloween 2014 was just around the corner, I suggested we have a costume contest in the cafeteria. I dressed up as a ghoul. We had a big turnout and people had fun. The party was a success. I felt that the culture was repairable. We started with that basic building block of culture: trust. We needed to build two kinds of trust: trust that the company would do what it promised to do, and trust that the things that we promised to do would deliver results. The first kind of trust only comes with consistent practice over time, which is why we focused on it first. I am not sure when we crossed the line into a high-trust culture, but we did. The second kind of trust — trust that we can deliver results — shows up in the numbers. People like to work for companies that perform; they want to be part of a winning team - who they can trust. It had been a long time since C&F had been a winner from an underwriting standpoint. We had work to do on that front. More fundamentally, why do people work anywhere? People want to realize their long-term potential. I believe people want to work for a company where they can picture an attractive, lucrative long-term career path ahead of them — and where they understand how to navigate toward their career goals. People want to work for a company that cares enough to invest in their future. We supercharged our training and development resources. Beyond that, we encouraged our people to own their own career path — whether they wanted to take a technical role as far as that road goes, run a business - or become the next CEO.
Next, we tackled the office environment, which I believe is the physical manifestation of the company’s attitude toward its people. We completely overhauled our office space. At 305 Madison, we bought the building, moved out, took it down to the steel girders and rebuilt it into a bright, modern space. Now people enjoyed coming to the office — the change in energy was palpable. You could really feel it in the lunchroom: the food was healthy, the people were buzzing - it was awesome.
C&F employees in front of the newly renovated 305 Madison Ave. headquarters.
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