The Critical Few

Culture determines an organization’s potential.

Company’s typically strive toward the goals of satisfying customers, offering exceptional products and services, making money, and having a positive impact on society. But those objectives often fade as time passes. Leaders and employees lower their expectations and lose sight of how culture influences prosperity. Boards fire their CEOs when companies fall short of financial expectations, though the underlying problem often proves to be failure to provide sufficient structure, direction and motivation for the workforce.

Within a company, people’s collective actions, emotions and values define the culture. Culture establishes suitable behaviors and norms. Do leaders expect meetings to begin promptly at your company? Can employees have a snack or check their phones during presentations? Company culture is often difficult to define, but provides an unofficial framework for acceptable ways of conducting business.

Organizational operations normally function with these components:

• “Business strategy” – Consensual agreement on how to...