Culture Construction

We use the word “culture” arbitrarily, citing it to explain why things don’t change, won’t change, or can’t change.  A powerful force, culture anchors strategy and creates the environment where the best people can do their best work. It’s that subtle yet powerful driver that leaders strive—often futilely—to influence.

Corporate culture—the pattern of shared assumptions that the group has adopted and adapted over a period of time—develops in much the same way as legends and traditions do. It encompasses more than a list of do’s and don’ts on organizational behavior. Culture involves the daily decisions that occur in an organization that affect success—a kind of alchemy of both the spirit and practices that make a company better than the sum of its parts.

Continuous improvement involves an attitude that systematically seeks to improve efficiency, learning, change initiatives, and quality. Once leaders identify a tactic, process, or practice that delivers value, that approach offers an opportunity for optimization. It becomes “the way we do things around here.”

As the world becomes more complex and global, leaders will find the issues of corporate culture more relevant to organizational performance. They will both create culture and serve as the central force in its evolution and change. But to do this, they need to understand the details about how to establish cultures in new situations and to manage cultural issues in mature organizations. When they do this, they will do the following:

• Support new strategies
• Identify habits that have been slowing progress
• Align the entire company around the mission, core values, and guiding behaviors
• Minimize barriers to change
• Break down silos and create true collaboration across functions, geographies, and hierarchies.
• Shift to a customer focus and foster faster, better decisions involving people close to the customer.
• Recruit, retain, and engage top performers.

Leaders who aspire to outshine their competitors understand the need to pay more attention to culture so they can influence it, understand it, guide it, and tie it to their growth strategies.