We talk a lot about company culture in our newsletter. Over the past year, the company culture at Newsletter Pro has shifted, due in part to many members of our team working from home, but we’ve worked hard to maintain parts of our company culture from before the shift, bringing in new elements along the way. How do you build a company culture that makes sense for your business in a changing world? It’s become an increasingly hard question to answer, but every business needs to keep many things in mind. Consider this: Last year, the Harvard Business Review published an article about employees having increasingly higher expectations of their employers. This is something we’ve seen over the course of the pandemic and into 2021. Many employers have struggled to hire — and it’s not just because of ongoing unemployment benefits. Part of it has to do with company culture. That is, many companies simply don’t have a culture people want to be a part of. Employees want to know they matter and that their work matters. Offering competitive compensation and benefits are important, but HBR reported on a LinkedIn survey that found employees were fine with lower pay if the company had a great culture. They want to be with a company that puts effort into its employees. Company culture is built around people. While leadership can steer culture, they can’t just create one and hope the pieces fall into place. It has to make sense, especially for employees. As HBR points out, it boils down to a few key ingredients: employees successfully fitting into their roles and having support and resources they need to do their job well, feeling connected to their coworkers in a positive way, and knowing their role and work matters. With these things in mind, you can begin to shape your culture into something great — and something current and future employees will want to be a part of. The Driving Force Building a Company Culture That Makes Sense
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Did you ever watch the TV show “Mad Men”? It’s set at a 1960s ad agency and pretty much every episode proves the power of good marketing. In one of our favorite scenes, advertising executive John Draper has to come up with a marketing message to help Kodak sell their new slide projector, the Carousel. His pitch is brilliant. He shows the room full of executives a slideshow of his family photos, cranking up the nostalgia and illustrating how the slide projector can serve as a gateway to happy memories. Then he says, “It’s called the Carousel. It lets us travel around and around and back home again.” Kodak’s real-life marketing message for the Carousel was “Relax! The spill-proof tray shows 80 slides, automatically!” and while they strike two entirely different tones, both are money-making taglines. Still, we’d argue one is better than the other. Check out
Have you ever wondered how philosophy could benefit you in modern life? Many classic Stoicism philosophers, such as the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, provide valuable life wisdom that’s never been adapted to the 21st century — until now. In William B. Irvine’s book “A Guide to the Good Life,” you’ll find a systematic practice of philosophy that readers can follow to achieve tranquility, including several mental exercises that anyone can practice in their daily, fast-paced lives. For example, how do we find tranquility when we take the good things in our lives for granted? In Stoicism, it’s very important to counteract “hedonic adaptation.” Basically, when we’re used to the good things in our lives, we lose the ability to enjoy them. “Hedonic adaptation” is the real enemy of tranquility, Irvine writes, because we’ll stop being satisfied and gain new desires without getting happier. One mental exercise to counteract this is imagining your life where everything is going wrong and visualizing the ways you could potentially lose what you have. This can help renew the appreciation you have for the good parts of your life. Another Stoic exercise that Irvine offers is the internalization of goals. First, you must determine the extent to which you can control the outcome of any situation. Then, ensure you only worry about which parts you can control and relinquish your concern for the rest. For example, why set a goal to impress Tranquility Through Philosophy Review of ‘A Guide to the Good Life’
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