Seeking A Culture Of Excellence?

A version of this article was first published on Forbes — Jun 8, 2021

All cultures are cultures of excellence; what makes the difference is how you define excellence.

Culture @ Its Core

Culture is the expression of human intellectual achievement. It is the manifestation of corporate intellectual investments and the consequence of execution triumphs and defeats. It is the enabler of the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next and the facilitator of delivering value to all of your stakeholders.

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British poet Matthew Arnold defined culture as the “cultivation of the humanist ideal” — nurturing excellence. At its core, culture holds the quality in a person, society or a company that arises from what is considered excellent and must be expressed, spread, deep-rooted and changed.

The word “culture” is derived from the Latin word “colere”: to tend to the earth and grow, to cultivate and nurture. All cultures deploy four basic attributes. First, they are manifested or expressed by symbols, processes and behaviors. Second, they are distributed, where shared tangible and intangible manifestations define community norms, creating the uniformity that bonds people together. Third, they are ingrained in people and solidify the beliefs and rules of behaviors and define the boundaries of acceptable and the definition of excellence. Lastly, they evolve as new norms and beliefs are slowly shaped, as they come in contact with other cultures and events.

Culture @ The Workplace

Workplace culture is not an end result, but an evolving operating system — a software of sorts. It is a company’s pattern of thinking, feeling and acting embedded in and enforced by a common operating platform: “the software of the mind.” It is a platform that delivers consistency in your decision-making, strategies and priorities. It is a platform that ingrains who your company is into what your company does. Corporate culture is the manifestation of the intellectual and execution achievements of a company through a platform that facilitates the distribution of your organization’s purpose: the devotion that glues everyone together and shapes your definition of excellence.

Your corporate culture simply exists and evolves. A new culture never suddenly appears because you choose to make it materialize; cultivating ideals and nurturing your excellence requires deliberate and continuous mind shifts as well as decisive and purposeful actions.

Culture @ Practice

You don’t have a culture of innovation just because you claim you have one. You do not have a culture of execution, service, accountability or excellence because it is in your mission statement. Culture is not behaviors and beliefs imposed upon an organization, but rather is the result of the interactions, behaviors, decisions, accomplishments and failures of a company as a whole and of each individual team member.

Culture may be the software of an organization, but all software has “bugs” and has to be revamped to address change. Every time an organization wins or loses and every time a person is hired or fired, the company’s operating system is updated. In fact, every decision made causes the operating system to learn and evolve.

There are multiple approaches to changing your normal, your culture. First is reform, reconception and renovation: to chip away at the existing culture in order to rebuild a new one slowly. Second is involution and regress: to aspire to become what you used to be. The third is revolution and innovation: to root out, re-imagine and form a new culture in a radical and expeditious way. Regardless of what path you choose to construct your next version, here are four factors to consider:

1. Clarify your purpose and define your excellence.

Make your purpose tangible and your organization’s definitions of “excellent” and your “ideal” clear. Illusive goals lead to illusive results. Aim for achievability, simplicity, precision, intelligibility and understanding. Remember, all your tangible and intangible manifestations will embody your ideal.

2. Let your culture be manifested through rituals, definitions, symbols, products and procedures.

Sociologists define culture as the product we build and the systems and procedures we design manifested through material and non-material dimensions. The non-material (the intangibles) includes values and beliefs, morals, collective knowledge, accepted common sense, joint assumptions, rituals, communication, language and practices. The material (the tangibles) includes products, procedures and systems. Integrate these two dimensions of your corporate culture and constantly reinforce your excellence. Align the definitions, symbols and products with your excellence. Watch out for inconsistencies and obsolete rituals.

3. Make communication and dissemination your mission.

To make culture stick, take root and grow, you must disseminate your excellence not once but with every decision and action — with every manifestation. Your goal is to make your “ideal” clearly visible and your beliefs and assumptions contagious. Any deviation will have consequences. Observe and measure the genuine “stickiness” of your manifestations and the virality of behaviors. As your ideal gets ingrained, let others manifest their way and reinforce your organization’s excellence. Remember, messages delivered through actions are considerably more effective than those concealed in words. Be aware of subcultures that lead to conflict.

4. Let it evolve.

In 1951, Elliott Jaques introduced the concept of shared corporate culture as the driver of the customary ways of thinking and doing — traditions that are infectious and are passed on to new employees. Cultures survive only if they are passed on to the next generation. Your culture defines how well people “play together,” as Marshall Goldsmith puts it. All cultures evolve as they come in contact with change. The evolution of cultures leads to new manifestations that are shared and learned. This is an evolution that introduces new beliefs and behaviors across the entire community and shapes new traditions, heritage and ways of life. Be alert; if you miss the opportunity to engineer the evolution and your culture alongside your organization, it will erode slowly.

@ The End

Depending on how you define “excellent,” your company’s culture can cultivate success or defeat, growth or stagnation, and innovation or preservation. To build a culture of excellence, first and foremost define your excellence.