Consciously Creating Culture

Just as the topic of leadership has morphed into lists of traits, principles, philosophies and concepts, organizational culture has received similarly superficial treatment. While most people in leadership positions are aware of culture as an organizational phenomenon, their limited understanding of two important points seriously limits their effectiveness at creating the cultures they desire.

1. They don’t understand the true power of culture, the impact the culture has on individual and organizational performance.

2. They don’t understand the specific things they can do (the process they can use), to consciously create cultures that reinforce and support behavior essential to organizational success.

Culture is to organizations what attitude is to individuals. And who among us would quarrel with the notion that individuals’ attitudes are powerful? What evidence can we see of a person’s attitude? A person’s behavior provides evidence of his or her attitude. The internal (attitude) is manifest in the external (behavior). We can also say that a person’s attitude drives his or her behavior. Behavior is an inside-out dynamic; a person’s behavior in certain situations or toward certain people generally reflects that person’s attitude toward those situations and people. Most of us would agree that people’s attitudes exert powerful influences over their behavior. The same principle applies to organizational culture. An organization’s culture is not necessarily revealed in the words and phrases found in things like core values or mission statements. True, those words and phrases often describe what the authors would like the culture to be. But an organization’s actual culture is revealed in the behavior of the people working in that organization. Just as an individual’s attitude drives his or her behavior, an organization’s actual culture drives the behavior of its people. New employees may spend time reviewing their employers’ foundational documents and listening to people elaborate on the contents of these writings. But those new employees are soon exposed to the behavior of other employees and organizational leaders. And those behaviors—far more than the documents—will shape the ways those new employees learn to behave. Leadership behavior is the force that drives—creates and fine-tunes—organizational culture. Unless people in leadership positions make conscious efforts to effect needed changes in their cultures, the existing cultures will remain in place and will continue to manifest in the behavior of people working in their organizations. Here is my six-step process by which leaders can consciously create or fine-tune cultures, which I will explain in much more detail during my presentation at Execu/Summit in Jackson Hole, Wyo., in March:

1. Ensure that others understand the behavior you expect.
2. Identify and eliminate barriers to those behaviors.
3. Model those behaviors.
4. Measure performance using those expected behaviors as the standards.
5. Honor efforts and progress toward meeting your expectations.
6. Confront unwillingness and bad faith.

Jim Bearden, CSP, is author of The Relentless Search for Better Ways, about leadership and winning, and co-author of Good Business: Putting Spiritual Principles Into Practice at Work.