The success or failure of an enterprise is almost entirely dictated by how well the senior leadership of the organization creates a healthy culture. That’s a bold statement, I know, but it’s painfully true.

Read on …

A while back I wrote a series of blog posts on the topic of Leadership Fundamentals. Basically I took much of what I’ve come to know about leadership and put it into a series of posts. You can read through them by going to my Leadership Fundamentals Page.

I start this post by referring to leadership fundamentals because the first definition I’m going to put forward for “culture” is the following …

Culture is what happens when the senior leader(s) in the organization does or doesn’t practice the leadership fundamentals. Let me say this in a different way. If the leader(s) is good (i.e. practices the fundamentals at least most of the time) the result will be a healthy culture. If not, the result will be an unhealthy culture. It’s that simple! And, if the culture is healthy the enterprise will succeed. If not, it will struggle and ultimately fail.

So what is culture? The Encarta World English Dictionary defines culture as “The shared beliefs, customs, practices, and social behavior of a particular group.” Here’s another one, “A particular set of attitudes that characterizes a group of people.” In a sentence, “We have tried hard to avoid creating a blame culture.”

You get the idea.

Culture is something that’s very hard to define but easy to see. It doesn’t take long to conclude that an organization’s culture is “good” or “bad.” The key, though, is that you can’t create a good culture by talking about how important it is to have a good culture. Culture is something that happens as a result of behavior of the senior leader(s) in any organization. If there was ever an area where it’s important to “walk the talk,” this is it.

I like to use the example of the not so skilled dog trainer to illustrate my point. The trainer is attempting to teach a dog to come when instructed. You know, the trainer stands at a distance from the dog, says “come” and when the dog comes, the trainer “rewards” the behavior with a treat. Pretty simple … right? What happens when the dog doesn’t come as instructed? The not so skilled dog trainer stands at a distance, says “come” and the dog continues to go about its business. So, the trainer yells louder while walking closer to the dog. After several attempts the trainer has closed the distance between themselves and the dog and in frustration kicks the dog for not coming as commanded.

So, what did the dog learn? I’ll tell you. The dog learned, “don’t go to that person … their going to kick me!” Compare this to the mixed message of beating on your staff to “get out of the box” or “try something new and different” or otherwise take a risk, only to be “rewarded” with criticism and “what were you thinking!?!” when they fail. What does the person learn? They learn not to “stick their neck out” and take a risk because they might get their head chopped off. In other words, it’s one thing to “say” to your staff that you want them to try new things and take a few risks occasionally, but it’s a far different thing to actually create an environment (culture) that makes it safe for them to do so.

Practice the Leadership Fundamentals and create a “good” culture.

That’s all I have to say about that!

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