Everyone Agrees Culture is Crucial … But How Do You Create The Culture You Want?

Many business owners and executives are vocal in their agreement that organisational culture is crucial to the success of their venture. They also are enthusiastic when agreeing their business has a 'great culture'. When I ask what they do to create the culture they desire, suddenly the conversation takes a turn.

Unfortunately many are bereft of ideas how to deliberately build the culture they want.

Whilst it is worth noting each organisation, team and person is unique, my experiences helping multiple founders and leaders confirm there are key steps which are crucial to successfully creating the culture you desire.

Steps to take to define your culture

1) Self Reflection As the business leader you must be absolutely clear what is important to you as you define the organisational culture. Take time to reflect and do nothing but focus on your vision of the ideal culture. Remember as Peter Drucker famously said "Culture eats strategy for breakfast".

2) Core Values Core Values are the basis of Culture. Any cultural definition process must start with defining your organisational core values. Think of your core values as the framework for all organisational decision making.

3) Team Involvement/Buy In Defining core values and subsequently culture in isolation is dooming the process to failure. To get maximum engagement involve your team as much as possible. Seek and incorporate feedback.

4) Be Clear What Your Values Mean to Your Organisation Different people interpret the same phrase differently. The success of your change initiative is dependent on everyone in your team knowing what is expected of them. The time taken to educate or train your team will pay itself back many times over.

5) Executive Commitment Everybody in your management team or executive team needs to commit wholeheartedly. A founder or leader cannot do it by themselves, a partially committed manager will lead to their team delivering less than high performance.

6) Visibility High performance requires everyone to clearly know what is expected of them and how they are performing against those expectations. Continuous monitoring of performance allows for small corrections regularly to ensure performance remains on track.

7) Integration into Daily Decision Making Repetition is required for success. Regular, small but visible examples of decisions being made based on core values will be much more effective than regularly repeating core values with little or no context.

8) Courageous Communication Clear and regular communication is expected as part of any high performing culture. "Courageous communication", a term used by Phil Mydlach, ensures the tough conversations are not avoided. To create a truly high performing culture uncomfortable conversations are required periodically. Courageous communication on performance is direct, but always respectful and compassionate, and will lead to a healthy organisation with accelerating profitable growth.

Culture is too important to leave to chance, if you want to create a sustainable high performance organisation.