How do you communicate company culture?

🚀 Reflections on FTI Supernova: Linking company culture to personal branding thanks to Beth Davies 🚀

After the opening night with Obama, the FTI Supernova event, a powerhouse gathering for tech entrepreneurs, investors, and all who thrive on innovation, kicked off yesterday.

Beth Loeb Davies, a former senior leader at Apple and Tesla , shared a behind-the-scenes look at how these companies achieved monumental success where others saw barriers. She unraveled the fabric of innovation cultures —how Apple and Tesla, with their relentless focus on hiring the right people, rapidly integrating them, and continuously engaging them, managed to break the mold and set new paradigms.

One takeaway that resonated deeply was the emphasis on clearly defining and communicating company culture.

She stated that company culture differs from company values or mission. By company culture, she meant how people think, operate, and make decisions to achieve results.

She expressed that a company culture must be established top-down, not bottom-up. It must be communicated repeatedly in blogs, interviews, social media, internal and external, so that everyone, from employees to the C-suite, potential new employees, and even customers, clearly knows what they stand for.

The best way to communicate it is—what do you expect—by using storytelling. Tell the story of how someone in the company managed to solve this or that and how that showed a specific aspect of the company culture.

I see a clear link between Beth’s keynote and how I approach personal branding. Integrating company culture into your communication doesn't just build a brand; it empowers employees, giving them a clear framework to align their personal branding with their work, making them advocates more easily.

So, my question to you is: How well do you communicate your culture? Does every blog post, internal email, and pitch invite others into your culture? Do you use stories?