Every workplace has a culture.

Google is famous for its innovative college-style vibe… that has a slightly cultish flavor.

Small businesses range from fun and laid back, through a family atmosphere, to small dictatorships.

Large organizations tend to become bureaucratic nightmares. No organization wants to become like this, but the size can become unwieldy. The temptation is to create and impose rules so that everything continues to work.

Although every rule to reduce unwanted behavior also strangles its innovators. The art is in strangling the superstars less than keeping the slackers at bay.

It’s tempting to say “what’s best for your employees is best for the organization.” I want that to be true, but then I remember Derek Sivers talking about his first business, CD Baby.

He was incredibly laid back, it’s not a leadership style that a lot of people adopt.

Your approach to things like employee pay and conditions?

“Talk about it, tell me what you decide and I’ll make it happen.”

Which led him to give them all the income from his company.

Oh! Perhaps focusing on employee happiness to the exclusion of everything else is not the best approach.

Having said this…

Many people think a lot about the culture of their organization.

I certainly do.

I like hearing stories from people in other organizations, noticing how they treat their employees and how their leaders treat them.

Organizational cultures are like foreign cultures: each one seems sensible if you “grew up” in it and strange if you didn’t.

However, there is still a pattern between the noise:

Happiness and satisfaction.

Sure, you may not want to give all your power to your employees, Sivers-style…

But you still want to invest in their happiness.

Satisfied employees work hard, stay put, stay healthy, and attract their brightest friends. They become walking billboards for how big your organization is.

If you had a machine that created all of your most valuable products, you would want to keep it in good condition. You would do anything to keep it.

And yet, what do you do to cultivate a great community in your organization?

Well, start by paying them enough to make them feel valued.

And offering enough benefits to attract talent.

But all organizations play that game, and only one can offer the best package.

How do you create the best community, if bribing them is not enough?

A community is not just a group of people. Put humans in a room together and sometimes it gets violent.

It’s not about bloodlines or familiarity.

It’s not even a shared purpose or set of beliefs. Think of any religious schism: what Catholics and Protestants agree on far outweighs what they disagree on. That doesn’t stop them from turning on each other, sometimes in devastating ways.

A strong and rich community can be made up of strangers who disagree on big issues. Anyone who has been to festivals like Burning Man knows what I mean. You can love a boy like a brother and not even know his name.

A community arises from security, respect and trust.

Are your employees safe to talk?

Do they respect their leaders and are they respected in return?

Do your people trust each other?

If so, you are leagues ahead of everyone else.