Culture Architecting with Senior Executives

Let's nail down three key reasons why top management should take culture very seriously.

• First, anything this powerful should never be left to chance. Shape it carefully, and culture becomes a major corporate asset. Ignoring it creates unnecessary risk.
• Second, the senior leaders wield lots of personal influence over the organization's cultural leanings, for good or for bad. They should consciously ensure that they're a positive force.
• Finally, changing culture, or integrating cultures in a merger, gets tough. It needs the direction and ongoing support of top management.

So here's the bottom line: Senior leaders are accountable. It's top management's job to make sure that culture is your ally rather than letting it become a silent enemy within your own walls.

Think about this. Strategy is a product of your view of the future. Culture, on the other hand, is essentially the product of your history. It's very easy for the two to be out of sync. The challenge is to shape the corporate culture such that it aligns with and supports your plan for tomorrow.

• Articulate major strategic initiatives
• Identify defining characteristics of the current culture
• Address the cultural elements that need to stay, go, and be newly established
• Prioritize the mission-critical culture traits to be linked to strategy execution
• Visualize the desired end-state: what people should say, think, and do dofferently
• Develop a plan for operationalizing the culture-shaping process
• Identify who needs to do what, by when, to shape a culture that can deliver on the strategy

In these highly interactive sessions, the executive team crafts a practical, tangible plan for linking culture to strategy. This serves as the master blueprint for shaping corporate culture at all levels of the organization.