I was recently talking with a client who stated they had a family culture and I asked, “Is that what you want?”

Let’s unpack this for a moment… How many families do you know that work together, have healthy conflict, put their oars in the water to all row in the same direction for the same goals and vision, and are willing to make the tough choice of asking someone to leave the family if they aren’t the right cultural fit? I don’t know any families that operate like that, but that is exactly how I want my business to operate.

I also know that one of the hardest things for leaders to do in business is fire people – some of you cringed just reading the word – but it is one of the most important things you can do for your culture. In most families, either everyone remains part of the family unit, or it causes great divide and pain when a member of the family is outcasted. In business, even a family owned business, it can be much easier to fire people (or create an environment where they fire themselves) if you have the right culture.

What if you implement a value-based culture instead of a family culture? You determine what values your business needs in their culture such as respect, positivity, integrity, accountability, passion, fun, vulnerability, humility, quality, learning, ethical profit, leadership, diversity, innovation – whatever is important to your culture and YOU, and then you create accountability around upholding these values

For instance, if you have a value of honesty and an employee turns in a falsified expense reimbursement form, then they violated your core values and should be fired. Period. It doesn’t matter if they are a relative, have the highest sales numbers, or they've worked there the longest. If honesty is a value and they are caught being dishonest, then they do not fit in your culture. I promise you that everyone else knows they are dishonest, and they are waiting for you to show them if honesty is a word on the wall, or an expected behavior.

Your actions or lack of actions dictate the true culture.

What are the family values you want in your culture? How might it be different if instead of saying you have a family culture you choose your values and carefully instilled them into the fabric of the culture you want? And, what if you created accountability around living the values and everyone knew that was the expectation? Close your eyes for a moment and visualize what that would look like…

Now open your eyes, write down the core values that are important to you (the fewer you have, the easier to manage, so really think about what is most important) and create a culture that will be better than the family life of a lot of your employees (and less dysfunctional too!)