By Mark Rylance, CFP®, CFT ™
There’s something happening at RS Crum. In our office, in our emails, in our communication… We call it the RS Crum Way.
Successful companies have a culture that is anchored by its mission and driven by its team members. From our beginning in 1976, RS Crum has been different. Different in how we treat our clients, different in how we work with each other, and different in the results we achieve. As a company, we have strategically gone about refining and strengthening our culture by gathering input from clients, team members, and best practices of effective companies. What resulted is 30 specific behaviors we live by at RS Crum. Practiced consistently, these behaviors have become part of our DNA and our commitment to you.
At RS Crum, our culture has always acted as the foundation for us to reach our goals because we have great people who all believe in and contribute to the team’s success. It is our job to re-examine this with a critical lens on a regular basis and find areas for improvement to ensure our daily work is connected to our company’s short and long-term goals. Most importantly, a thorough review of company culture ensures our clients’ needs and interest are the centerpiece of our work.
By creating company rituals, we reinforce our commitment to our goal of having an effective culture on a daily basis. Each Monday morning, a team member sends out a personally written email that describes what our fundamental (behavior) of the week means to them and why they think it is important to our organization and clients. We then gather as a team to discuss the fundamental of the week and share examples of the specific behavior.
These company rituals have translated into action recently. For example, someone might say “Mark, permission to SPEAK STRAIGHT (Fundamental #12)? You didn’t LISTEN GENEROUSLY (Fundamental #11) when you had your cell phone out during my meeting.” Some instances are small behavioral changes of individuals and others are goals that will take regular practice and reflection, but all provide an opportunity to improve.
We recently sent out a client survey. We appreciate the direct feedback from clients and are proud of the many company strengths that were highlighted in the survey results. We also took it as an opportunity to focus on a few specific areas where we can improve. Applying our cultural fundamentals will help guide our improvement actions and ensure we continue meet clients’ needs and goals. We understand complete perfection is rarely a realistic outcome, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t be RELENTLESS ABOUT IMPROVEMENT (Fundamental #6).
Learn more about our culture and check out a full list of the RS Crum Way Fundamentals here.