Title: The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture
Headings: The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture
The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture
Defining Culture
As someone once said, culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Shared.
Pervasive.
Enduring.
Implicit.
Eight Distinct Culture Styles
People interactions.
Response to change.
The Eight Types of Company Culture
Integrated Culture: The Framework
Integrated Culture: Leader Statements
Learning: Tesla
Purpose: Whole Foods
Caring: Disney
Order: SEC
Safety: Lloyd’s of London
Authority: Huawei
Results: GSK
Enjoyment: Zappos
The Link Between Culture and Outcomes
When aligned with strategy and leadership, a strong culture drives positive organizational outcomes.
Selecting or developing leaders for the future requires a forward-looking strategy and culture.
Cultural dynamics are a frequently overlooked factor in postmerger performance.
In a merger, designing a new culture on the basis of complementary strengths can speed up integration and create more value over time.
In a dynamic, uncertain environment, in which organizations must be more agile, learning gains importance.
A strong culture can be a significant liability when it is misaligned with strategy.
The Pros and Cons of Culture Styles
Four Levers for Evolving a Culture
Articulate the aspiration.
Select and develop leaders who align with the target culture.
Use organizational conversations about culture to underscore the importance of change.
Reinforce the desired change through organizational design.
What’s Your Organization’s Cultural Profile?
Putting It All Together
About the Research
CONCLUSION

Content: For better and worse, culture and leadership are inextricably linked. Founders and influential leaders often set new cultures in motion and imprint values and assumptions that persist for decades. Over time an organization’s leaders can also shape culture, through both conscious and unconscious actions (sometimes with unintended consequences). The best leaders we have observed are fully aware of the multiple cultures within which they are embedded, can sense when change is required, and can deftly influence the process. Unfortunately, in our experience it is far more common for leaders seeking to build high-performing organizations to be confounded by culture. Indeed, many either let it go unmanaged or relegate it to the HR function, where it becomes a secondary concern for the business. They may lay out detailed, thoughtful plans for strategy and execution, but because they don’t understand culture’s power and dynamics, their plans go off the rails. As someone once said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. It doesn’t have to be that way. Our work suggests that culture can, in fact, be managed.