Each company has a culture, whether it’s old school thinking shrouded by huge mahogany desks or the quick and nimble start up who plays Halo at lunch. The good and the bad, the right and wrong, all companies think and act in their own way, and each company has its own unique culture. Some companies choose to be transparent in who they are, while others try and hide so as not to offend potential clients, partners or the press. Since the rise of the information age it is getting harder and harder to hide who you are. Google is everyone’s home page and your reputation is only a search away. A lot of companies have decided to stop hiding and allow who they really are to shine thru everything they do, this term is called cultural transparency. 
I must admit, mobileStorm has made a few mistakes with not showing our true selves (more on that later). We have a pretty neat culture. I founded the company hiring friends and family, so we have always had a culture of love, fighting, and joking around. No different than how you are with your siblings. It is a very light-hearted and flexible environment, where we are constantly pushing the limits with political correctness. Most of us grew up getting into the same amount of trouble. We didn’t worry about what our friends thought of us and we certainly didn’t worry about offending anyone. Life is about having fun and pushing the limits, so why should your organization be any different?
I can hear Tammy and Natalie (who run HR for us) cringing as I write this, but I believe a company should never lose their edge no matter the cost. Now I am not suggesting conversations with fellow employees should be direct quotes from Tupac’s “I Get Around”, but I believe if you are very upfront with who you are as an organization and you only hire people that fit within your culture you have a lot less to worry about and Tammy and Natalie can sleep well at night. This is one of the main reasons I personally interview everyone who is hired at mobileStorm whether or not I am making the hire. I might have a manager come to me and tell me they really want to hire someone, but I always make sure to give them a quick culture interview at the very end.
100% of the time when I have hired someone as a necessity and have not taken culture into account, their employment has not lasted. If you cannot see yourself having a beer with someone after work, why would you want to work with this person every day? I understand when you are a huge organization you lose some of this, but as a small business don’t sacrifice, you don’t need to, especially now, the talent pool is amazing.
So getting back to cultural transparency, in the same way you screen potential employees to see if they fit within your culture, (i.e. advertise your real self), why not extend that to your potential clients and partners? This is what cultural transparency is all about. In the past our culture has shined thru a few times but very sub-conscientiously. I didn’t really think of having a strategy for cultural transparency. Then about a year and a half ago we decided to create Outside The Inbox, a type of Daily Show online that covered news and topics for the email and SMS industries. We wanted this to be our coming out party to show our real colors. We wanted to push the limits, and show the world that mobileStorm was creative, fun and not worried about offending anyone. OTI was great but it was short lived because it took up so much time and we really had to focus on sales. Note: It got pretty popular for a little while, it will be back one day! OTI was the first step towards true cultural transparency but even then, the messaging on our website, our SaaS platform, our email communication and our voice mail system did not reflect who we really were. If you are going to share with the world the real you, you might as well go all out.
Very much like comedy, if you do something half-assed it won’t be funny. You need to go all the way out, if you don’t live it and you don’t believe it, neither will your audience and you will booed off stage. I have come to realize the same thing about a companies culture. You need to live it every day, and act the same way no matter who you are talking to. In the end you will be respected for it and looked at as a leader, and your audience will buy it, and buy from you. Think about real life, who reading this actually enjoys the company of a fake person? “Company”, get it?
So to that end, I have made it my mission to let our culture breath through everything we do. You will see with our new site (launching this Sunday) we completely rewrote all of our messaging to reflect how we actually think. You will call up our tech support and notice a different attitude, or receive an automated email with a conversational tone. I am trying to create a cultural revolution here at mobileStorm but I realize it is not going to happen overnight (what revolutions actually do?). I am however working to instill transparency in everything we do and I am confident we will be there soon. I challenge you to learn this concept sooner rather than later, as I believe it will pay off big time. Now if you have really boring company sorry, there is nothing I can do to help you. Maybe you need to learn how to fake excitement.
Can the real mobileStorm please stand up?