Do You Remember MapQuest?

Well hey there, I hope you’re having a great start to the week so far. We’re at the midweek stretch now and the weekend is in sight, but before we do that there’s something else we need to talk about – and it’s your company culture.

I was reminded of something from many years ago recently, MapQuest. Now you’re probably thinking, ‘Corteen what are you talking about, pretty much every phone out nowadays has GPS on it, why on Earth were you thinking about MapQuest and what does any of this have to do with my company culture?’

Well some of you may remember that before every smartphone was equipped with GPS, we used MapQuest to get around.

I used it to get everywhere, many of you probably did the same, truthfully it was incredibly helpful in making sure that I was able to get to all the appointments I had booked up throughout the week without getting lost. I’d have my trusty sheet in hand with all my directions, and even though sometimes I’d still manage to get lost, with the help of my trusty MapQuest directions I’d find my way back on route to my destination.

MapQuest was a real lifesaver sometimes, but there’s an incredibly important point that I want to talk about today because as helpful as those directions always were, they wouldn’t have been able to get me anywhere I needed to go without a critical piece of information, and it relates directly to your company culture.

You see before I got in my car, and set out with those printed out directions, I’d start out by punching in the address of where I needed to go on the computer in order to get me the turn by turn directions. If it wasn’t for typing in where I was going to go, then MapQuest would’ve been useless. I mean, it could take me to pretty much any location I wanted, but in order to do so, I had to tell it where I wanted to go.

Your company culture is no different. You can’t simply get into the drivers seat with some good intentions and hope to be guided to a great culture.

No, like MapQuest, your culture requires you to lay out very specifically where you want to go in order to point you in the right direction. If the destination is a great company culture, there has to be a roadmap to take you there with step by step instructions for how to get there.

You as a leader need to create a MapQuest type detailed list of where you want to take your company culture so that you can navigate your way there every single time you want to go there. You want these steps for creating a great culture to be so clearly defined that you can look to them for guidance in the future.

Create a detailed blueprint for what you want out of your culture, and how you’re going to make sure that you can deliver on it so that you always find your way just like we used to with those MapQuest directions.

Give that some thought, put some plans in place, and get on that journey. I promise, you’ll be glad you started now.