environment . That environment that shapes beliefs is what is called culture . Strategy lays out what you want to accomplish as an organization but culture creates a conducive atmosphere for what you want to achieve .
Strategy without a conducive culture is a gamble that often leads down the road to frustration for leaders . Behavior that is imposed from outside is not sustainable in an organization . This will be akin to the Nigerian soldiers whipping people to be orderly .
How then do we get this behavior to come from inside ? That is the seemingly secret ingredient that made the Japanese clean the stadium without reward for doing it or a consequence for not doing it . This is the ' something ' that we have been talking about .
Nothing shapes behavior like the environment and as such , if we get the culture right we will dramatically reduce our training costs because there will be enough power in our culture that will cause people to behave the way we want them to behave .
Once we are able to fix the culture in an organization , the culture will fix behavior . The Strategic plan starts from the top and cascades down . Culture however gets its direction from the top but its execution starts from the bottom and it starts with a culture audit .
It is important to note that the view from the top is strategic and the view from the bottom is emotional . The culture program must therefore take into consideration the view from the top ( Strategic ) and the view from the bottom ( Emotional ) to get a balanced perspective of the state of the company - the prevailing culture .
The Two Dynamics Of Culture
There are two sides to culture . The Visible Dimension and the Invisible Dimension . Behavior is visible . Attitude and mindset are invisible .
The visible aspect of culture can be seen from how we dress , how we decide our office is going to look , office rituals and many other things that are visible to anyone observing .
The Invisible aspect of culture is the
When people own a part of the organization even through something as seemingly minute as a title that they love and which gives them an identity , their performance will shoot up . When people work in an environment which allows them to grow in ways that benefit their careers and personal life , enthusiasm and ownership are the natural byproducts .
mindset also known as a belief system or a way of thinking . It is possible to have a one hundred percent score where the visible and the physical aspects of culture are concerned but in reality the power behind a successful culture are the unseen dynamics and these are the things that influence the mindsets and the belief systems of people . These are the most important determinants of how people will behave and that belief system is shaped largely by their environment . The Eddie Murphy movie , Trading Places is a perfect depiction of how a person ' s behavior can be radically and dramatically changed just by altering their environment .
So , the environment ultimately which shapes belief systems and which ultimately determines how people behave is called the culture of the organization . A lot of culture programs fail and are blown up by focusing on the visible and ignoring the invisible . However , the most powerful part of the culture program is the invisible . It is easy to change the visible aspect of culture but how do we change the mindsets of people ? This is the core of any culture program .
Strategy , Culture And Transformation
The end result of any strategy or culture program should be transformation . To define transformation we needed to understand the meaning of the prefix , trans . When we see the word transatlantic , the prefix added to the word Atlantic redefines the word to meaning across the Atlantic . The same thing applies when we see the word , trans-sahara . The prefix trans means across . As such when we see the word transformation , it means across forms . Literally from one form to another . The transformation or metamorphoses of a butterfly is a great example that I have used countless number of times to drive this point home . The first form is the egg followed by the larva , the pupa and finally the adult . True transformation is a movement across different forms . Each form has its own character and culture . What many people call transformation is not a true transformation but rather , excessive activity within a form . In essence , they have strategy sessions but still remain as eggs . Every truly effective strategy must of necessity take the organization from one form to another . This is the litmus test of a working strategy . The strategy will however not work without the right culture .
One of the most limiting expressions in business is ‘ this is how we have always done it ’. This is the mindset that kills transformation . Also , if an organization has developed a strategy and years down the line are still dealing with the same problems they had before the strategy was deployed , this is an indication that it did not work because every good strategy should deliver a transformation for the organization . Again , let me stress that the best of strategies cannot stand the weight of a wrong culture .
Building Blocks Of Culture
A strong culture must be built on the foundation of very strong building blocks . Before going further into this , let us take a look at two case studies .
Al Qaeda
There was a $ 25 million reward for any information that could lead to the capture of the terror leader Osama Bin Laden . Documentaries released after his killing by the US Special forces reveal that there were a number of people who actually
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