December 3, 2015 Chris Fuller

Leaders Produce Culture… Culture Produces Results!

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Great culture is ultimately the result of intention, design, action, and accountability.  As a leader, it is your responsibility to LEAD where you need to go.  Below are 3 tips that will help clarify the reality of your culture, define what all stakeholders want, and best of all, you will learn how to process and transform your company culture into something clear, enjoyable and highly effective! 

 

  1. Assess Your Present

 

Assessing gives you specific insight into where your organization’s imbalance lies. As a leader, it is important to be extremely attentive to the internal and external dialogue of your employees, clients, and key stakeholders.  To get a solid diagnostic look into your organization’s culture, you can approach the process two ways: informally (through candid conversations and honest observations) or formally (through a guided, thorough survey).

 

Practical questions to be answered in your assessment:

     1) What does it look and feel like to be our employee?

     2) Does our internal culture ripple out to our external customers?

     3) Is our internal culture delivering results that return appropriate value to our investors?

Once you know what kind of culture you’re starting from, where you need to go will be much clearer.

 

  1. Architect Your Future

 

From wherever you start, this second phase is when you determine what your new culture must look and feel like.. 

 

If we set our standards to the highest desired point of a great place to work, hitting on all cylinders of operational excellence and exceeding client or customer expectations – what would that look like?

 

A critical aspect of Architecture is drawing it all up and lining it all out. It is imperative to establish your new norms – PRACTICAL daily habits, clear expectations, breaking the ultimate into easy to implement actionable behaviors.

 

The most effective way to discuss and establish the new norms you must follow is by a DITLO (“Day in the Life Of”) framework. Architecting an improved culture essentially involves creating a clear blueprint for what the new culture will look and feel like. It’s about clear roles and responsibilities, clear behavioral expectations.

 

  1. Activate from A to B

 

Even though your organization’s needs are highly individual, there are a few guiding principles that will help you navigate any situation to your cultural end goal.

 

As a leader, your first task in the Activation phase is to lead by example. In the Activation phase, you are expanding your new results-oriented norms from strategies to standardized practices every single day (DITLO).

 

The most important tool for providing security for the people of companies needing to improve results is a scoreboard. A good scoreboard displays:

     • desired results,

     • the key indicators on the path to those results,

     • the daily activities that will create those desired results, and

     • individual and group progress toward the results.

 

  1. Wrap Up 

 

Simply put, your company can never become healthier, unless you and your key people do too.

     1) Have patience: culture change is an ongoing process

     2) Expect failure: every time you endure, you grow.

     3) Be courageous: courage is acknowledging fear, and then taking action anyway

 

 

 

 

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