to succeed, every strategic initiative requires cultural alignment.
Quality is no longer a competitive advantage. Today’s priority is to be heard in a “noisy” marketplace. What strategic imperative will set the pace tomorrow? Whatever it turns out to be, rest assured that the strategic imperatives will continue to change at an ever increasing rate. Your only security will come from having a corporate culture capable of inspiring and marshaling people…realigning to support each new strategic initiative. Cultural alignment is the only dependable bridge to corporate survival and prosperity.
by LSI publisher Art McNeil
10 steps to align culture
1. Explain the strategic initiative (SI) being implemented (what, why, when, how, and who)
2. Identify the need to align culture behind the SI
a. Define culture as collective habits used by a group to get things done
3. Differentiate management (position, plans, processes) from leadership (people, values vision)
a. Culture is a leader (people) not a manager (position) issue
4.Advise that in the post industrial era aka “shift-age,” leadership must be everybody’s business
a. The five year old that lives within all of us determines corporate energy, creativity, will to win, and desire to belong
b. Role of the pirate (5 yr. old) and the admiral (trained adult with position responsibilities) that lives within us all
c. State that making the new SI work will require endorsement from the pirates
5. What you believe dictates what you can see (and determines the direction you are predisposed to take)
a. Transitioning from personal (core) values to team (cultural) values
b. Moving Cultural values from knowledge, to a performance/ behavior tool
c. The Cultural values clarification process
d. How to use cultural values to foster pirate support for the SI
6. Vision as the future tense of values
a. Identify the need for a north star.
b. Creating a Statement of purpose (aka brand promise)
c. Focus a vision of the preferred future (what successful SI implementation will look like)
7. Develop and deliver a differentiation message (promoting the SI task at hand)
8. The ethics platform (values are what is tolerated … not what is wished or said)
a. Creating A behavioral boundary for each cultural value
9. Skills practice:
a. How to recognize cultural-values contributions
b. Implementation reinforcement
c. Benefits of the performance redirection process and participation expectations
10. Signing on to deliver the SI
a. Deliver a differentiating message using the SI as task at hand
This post sponsored by The Baton System
