When marketing the advantages of your organization over your competitors, know that conversations about your people, your workflows and your products and services are not enough to show a differentiation.  People come and go and replacements can be trained to continue your company's mission. Workflows can be created, enhanced, and even adapted from elsewhere.  Over time, every one of your "unique" products or services can be offered by other companies.

What really defines an organization's uniqueness, however, is its culture.  This is what defines your organization's personality and the shared ideas of "how things getdone around here," according to TheLadders.com (Feb. 27, 2008).  Corporate culture is abroad term that encompasses how employees think, act, feel and behave.  It describes unique beliefs and behavior of a company and it includes the organization's core values, mission, ethics, and rules of behavior.

Corporate culture is important because it affects the hours employees work, how people interact with each other (or don't), how they dress, benefits offered, office layout, training, and professional development, says Randi Bussin, a 25-year veteran of career coaching and founder of Aspire!.

One important factor about your organization's culture is in how it attracts or repells new employees or prospective new business.  here are some ways you can begin to assess your organization's existing culture:

1. What three words would you use to describe your organization?
2. What is the organization's stated set of cultural values?  Is this evident from the mission statement?
3. Describe the work environment?  Are frowns commonplace or is there a sense of comaraderie?
4. What is the organization's bent towards education and professional development?
5. What types of employment achievements are recognized by the organization?
6. What types of sponsorships or philanthropic activities does the organization participate in?

If you take the perspective that people are an organization's most important asset, than its culture becomes the true barometer of how well the organization lives up to that belief.