Successful leaders know they will never win without the right culture. Culture determines how people think, feel, and behave within an organization. It is the most powerful and predictive force within an organization. It can be positive and productive or negative and destructive. It can be a single and consistent culture for the entire company or different units of the same organization may adopt and maintain their own cultures. Leaders know they must have a single, clear, and comprehensive culture which is optimal for what they seek to achieve.
Your culture must match your mission, goals, and objectives. When people share the same values, beliefs, and attitudes, they can effectively work together as a team on a shared mission, goals, and objectives. For example, the customer experience is optimal within an organizational culture which places the client at the center of everything. It’s a culture which constantly asks, “What would the customer like best and how do we deliver that?”
Leaders create and sustain the culture through recruiting, hiring, evaluations, and promotions. They also employ all the other tools of organizational life such as policies, procedures, and training. They recognize that even the facilities and technology can influence culture.
They are ever attentive to the metrics of culture such as employee retention, performance, and engagement and customer satisfaction. If an exceptional customer experience is their focus, these leaders make sure it is correctly measured in a number of formal and informal ways on a regular basis. They are always paying close attention to how members of the team talk, think, analyze, decide, work, and treat each other and the customers.
Culture must be specific, written down, taught, rewarded, and reinforced. Ritz-Carlton Hotels offers an excellent example. The attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and values of members of their team are clear, detailed, actionable, and easily understood in what looks like a contract which all employees have.
Culture is all about people. It is hired and promoted. Generally speaking, if leaders recruit, hire, evaluate, and promote for it, they will get it.
Culture has to be clear, consistent, intentional, and continuously rewarded and reinforced. Leaders make it their top priority. They have to be unrelenting in ensuring the culture which produces success is created and remains in place.
Culture will always govern. It will override policies and procedures every day of the week. It is the defining influence on how people will think and behave within an organization.
When you look at any organization within a field or industry, if it is failing or excelling, it’s culture. It is the primary predictor and greatest influence on organizational life and outcomes.
Sources: Abrashoff, 2002; Blanchard, 2011; Collins, 2001; Drucker, 2001; Grant, 2017; Kotter, 2012; Lencioni, 2012; Maxwell, 1998; Welch, 2005.
