What is Culture?
Culture is who you are as a company. It is a set of shared assumptions that guide how the individuals within your company perceive, think, feel, and react to various situations. These behaviors are learned organically by watching how leaders and team members interact with each other and their customers.
Culture greatly impacts what achievements are possible for your company, but for most leaders, it seems invisible and is often difficult to get their head and hands around it.
Creating a Game Changing Culture
Bottom line, culture starts with you. If you are happy inside and are doing what you love, it will show. If you are open, honest, and genuinely care about the happiness and success of others, they will feel it. If you believe in others and value them, they will know it. If you enjoy life and have fun at work and play, those around you will too.
A Game Changing Culture is an extension of consistent leadership beliefs and actions-what you say, feel, and do. It can be changed when understood, prioritized, and focused on. It becomes the foundation of what people believe and value in the company, which shapes their behavior and ultimately determines how things get done.
Most companies have their “own unique culture.” In larger companies, there are sometimes conflicting cultures that co-exist due to different values and characteristics of the management team. Every company culture, no matter what the company size, may have both negative and positive aspects.
My Experience with Culture
In the ’80s and ’90s, I was fortunate enough to be part of a dynamic, fast growing organization who had great leadership and a positive and open management style. They demonstrated total trust, respect and confidence in their team. As a result, we had a very strong, dedicated, game-changing culture where team members would go above and beyond for the success of the team and satisfaction of the customers.
I not only got to witness and experience the magic of this game changing culture; I was part of the team that made it happen. We worked hard to define the values that were truly meaningful to us so we knew we could be what we said we were-or in other words, we could walk our talk. Then we consistently modeled those behaviors or values in all that we did and said. These values were an intrinsic part of our policies, procedures, programs, training, and incentives and recognition programs, which resulted in the natural organic growth of our game-changing culture.
The Importance of Culture
Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” For those who have seen the impact of culture on a company’s success, you will know how true that statement is. When company leaders understand this and prioritize culture, the results can be absolutely astonishing and even magical for both individuals and the corporation as a whole.
The bottom line is, no matter how inspiring your vision or how brilliant your strategy, neither will happen effectively if not supported by the culture. It is the culture, not the leaders, that determines what is accepted and rejected within a company. Culture decides which people will be accepted and successful and which ones will leave. Culture determines which ideas get implemented and which get dumped. Finally, culture determines if corporate strategy will even have a chance to succeed.
Many companies are faced with transforming a culture that is characterized by bitterness, lack of trust, fear of buyouts, projected layoffs, downsizing, or a change in management. As a result, most organization’s cultures restrict or limit change rather than supporting or accelerating it.
This won’t work if your organization needs to move more quickly and effectively and in today’s world, it certainly needs to. Leaders must understand what causes culture and influences the team members within it in order to create a game changing culture.
Are you ready to create a game changing culture? Visit http://www.practicalsolutionszone.com/who-we-are/ to learn more about our founder and visionary and how we can help you create a game-changing culture