Impactful Element: Culture
Impactful "Culture": shared values, norms, and practices that drive organizational behavior.
Welcome to The Impactful Executive!
Read time: 2.5 min
The Impactful Executive newsletter uses the Impactful Framework as a loosely structured sequence of nine elements, each with evidence-based practices and tactics for executives, managers, advisors, and their teams.
See the reference article below, if needed, before this Element deep dive.
The Impactful Framework
Evidence-based practices for executive teams.
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy are the noise before defeat.”
Sun Tzu
Impactful Element Defined: Culture
“Strategy without culture is brittle. Strategy without culture will not win. You have to have both. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. And breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
Mark Fields
The “Culture” element is defined as:
Culture is the shared values, beliefs, and practices defining an organization's operations.
It serves as the organization's North Star, guiding business activities, decision-making, and strategic directions.
Culture fosters a sense of unity and purpose, inspiring teams to work towards common objectives.
A positive organizational culture encourages open communication, employee engagement, and well-being.
It embraces diversity and inclusion, fostering creativity and innovation.
"No company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it."
Jack Welch
"Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with passion."
Brian Chesky
Impactful Element Practices: Culture
The following is a sample selection of Impactful Culture Practices:
Cultivate a Strong Organizational Culture: A strong organizational culture can amplify company performance. Zappos is renowned for its unique culture, with its 'Culture Book', filled with employees' thoughts about the company culture, reinforcing core values and distinctive practices.
Promote a Diverse and Inclusive Culture: Companies with racial and ethnic diversity are likelier to achieve high financial returns. Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, Microsoft has prioritized diversity and inclusion, with a focus on unconscious bias.
Recognize and Reward Performance: Recognizing and rewarding efforts can boost productivity and stimulate morale. Starbucks' 'Partner of the Quarter' initiative recognizes exemplary employees, enhancing morale and engagement.
Ensure Psychological Safety: Employees who feel safe expressing themselves are more productive and contribute to more profitable results. Pixar Animation Studios fosters a culture where employees are encouraged to share unfinished work and iterate, facilitating a psychologically safe environment that promotes creativity. Google's 'TGIF' meetings boost engagement and transparency.
Foster a Learning Culture: A learning culture promotes continuous improvement and adaptability, enhancing productivity and organizational performance. Google uses people analytics to improve learning and productivity, as exemplified by "Project Aristotle", which yielded valuable insights into effective team dynamics.
Promote Employee Wellness: Promoting a work-life balance can increase productivity and foster a healthier, more motivated workforce. Creating a healthy, ergonomic work environment and implementing wellness programs can boost productivity and reduce absenteeism. Johnson & Johnson's comprehensive wellness program includes initiatives that have improved employee health and saved substantial healthcare costs. Patagonia's flexible work policies, such as onsite child care and paid sabbaticals, lead to high employee satisfaction and productivity.
"If you get the culture right, most of the other stuff will just take care of itself."
Tony Hsieh
In subsequent newsletters, we will deep-dive into many specific practices outlined above.
The Impactful Executive’s Purpose
Reminder: this newsletter pursues high-impact practices and tactics across each element to share fact-based, usable, and (hopefully) surprising insights.
It takes deliberate and sustained effort to drive organizational greatness. The Impactful Executive aims to make this greatness far more reachable.
In Jim Collins’ words, "Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline."
Impactfully yours,
The Impactful Executive Team
This post is public. Feel free to subscribe to and share the newsletter below.