culture buidlingculture buidling

by 

Neil Bedwell

#read
4 minutes

LOCAL's Six Culture-Building Principles

LOCAL is a fast-growing Change Communications agency. We practice Change Marketing™ — a unique blend of Change Management and consumer-grade Marketing. Change Marketing™ pierces through distraction and earns attention with stories that find the common ground between companies’ plans and their employees’ motivations. 

The strength in our approach comes from two simple beliefs: That companies don't merely employ people, they are people. And that those people deserve more than mandates. They are internal consumers, a valuable audience that must be won.

Our own company is our test bed for both these powerful ideas. Having been named one of Atlanta's "Best Places to Work" by the Atlanta Business Chronicle two years in a row, we feel we are onto something. We don't do it for the accolades, but it's nice when people take note of what you're doing and the positive impact it creates. In the hope that it may inspire you and your company's culture, we wanted to share the six guiding principles we follow to foster and protect our culture:

Collective.

Collaborative, communicative, and constructive, we invest in outcomes, not hierarchies.
How does this show up in our culture? Apply this to our hiring approach and we naturally attract hybrid talent. Bring this into our learning and development program and we naturally focus on personal growth over specific skill sets.

Effervescent

Enthusiastic, lighthearted, and witty, we believe joy is an essential component of work. 

How? We built our first LOCAL workspace in 2020. We listened to our team and let culture guide the design of the space. The result is a clubhouse, with a wide variety of social and intimate spaces, not an office.

Eclectic.

Wide-ranging in our interests and passions, we’re a crew of idea collectors, debaters, and synthesizers. 

How? We lean into our eclectic nature in our approach to business development. The goal is breadth over depth, to work and learn in as many different industries and categories as possible. We've proven our approach in more than 10 categories, from manufacturing to finance, CPG to non-profit.


Iconoclastic 

Fiercely protective of our upstart spirit, we know that conventional wisdom is the result of a lack of imagination. 

How? We intentionally take on enterprise change programs with Fortune 500 companies, including Coca-Cola, UPS, Kaiser Permanente, Capital One, and AT&T. Much of this work is won in competition against the well-known global consulting firms.


Compassionate 

Human beings are the heart of our work and we won’t forget it for a moment. 

How? People-first is a philosophy that applies to everything we do. The last 14 months saw an increase in stress and burnout across most industries. Compassion guides us to give space for our people to process societal and political tensions, to give them time to dedicate to community service, and to give them the freedom to decompress and enjoy each other's company safely without work constraints.


Insatiable 

Eternally inquisitive and driven to delve deeper, we’re never content with what’s in front of us. 

How? We know that every team member brings unique value and knowledge. We foster healthy and open work and knowledge-sharing routines to keep the curiosity flowing through our business.


We're immensely proud of the company we've built together. We even call ourselves Localitos in recognition of the power of our culture to drive our success. And to sustain that success, every decision we make as a company gets filtered through these core tenets to ensure it not only benefits the whole, but the amazing individual people that make up our company.