Culture: How to build it, change it and keep it

Culture is a buzzword for a reason. As Peter Drucker said, culture eats strategy for breakfast.

So how do you build, change and keep great culture?

1. Define the culture you want. Doesn’t need to be fancy. More is more, but go for clarity. The more clarity the better. Define it, refine it and refine it again.

2. Model it. Be the culture you want to see. Do you want an extremely collaborative culture? ... How much do you collaborate?

3. Reward it. What‘s celebrated gets cultivated. Celebrate the heck out of every great moment of culture. This helps others see what you want to see and rewards others as they step up to be what you want to see.

4. Don’t walk past it. Culture isn’t just what you celebrate. It’s what you put up with. Whatever you walk past that isn’t the culture you want, you are actually reinforcing it! Set clear expectations re culture and pick small battles one on one when someone’s behaviour isn’t up to scratch.

5. STORIES - stories are culture carriers. Don’t just reward great culture, find the stories, capture them and share them again and again and again. On what channel and through what medium? Yes. All of them! All of the above. Stories are like culture grenade launchers. One powerful story goes in and changes the atmosphere that months of other types of work wouldn’t quite achieve.

Go and get cracking! Build, change and keep the culture you want to see 😊