Culture is Everything

by Aug 9, 201311 comments

The Group 1In most organizations there are two processes happening at the same time:

  1. What We Do, and
  2. How We Do It.

I work every day with brilliant leaders, and I find that the “What We Do” part in their organizations is typically in much better shape than the “How We Do It” part. Generally, leaders understand the metrics and the goals towards which they are striving-the revenue, margin and EBIDTA targets for the organization, for example, but they don’t know how to inspire their teams to achieve them. Often, they may not appreciate what it takes to move beyond the metrics-to achieve greatness.

We might call the, “What We Do” the mechanics of the business and to the “How We Do It” the Organizational Culture.

Few leaders understand that organizational culture always-yes, always-trumps the mechanics of the business. This is because a brilliant strategy, poorly executed, will almost certainly fail, while a weak strategy, executed with passion and inspiration, will nearly always succeed.

Organizational culture then, is the beating heart of high-performance. Changing, “How We Do It” changes everything .

Organizational Culture can best be described as “How we do things around here” and “What we stand for and value most”.

Where “What We Do” is powered by the mind and the ego , “How We Do It” is powered by the soul.

The ego motivates and the soul inspires.  Check out this 90-second video clip for more – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL-Zf4b972Y