Steps to high performance corporate culture

The high performance corporate culture can be implemented just in case; the top management is interested in the change of the corporate culture. When the top management takes it as a „nice exercise“ and „good opportunity to learn“, the implementation effort of the new corporate culture will fail.

When changing the corporate culture, the implementation team has always to follow some defined steps:

1. The team has always to start with the business leader. The business leader is the person to make the decision to change the corporate culture and to demonstrate the vision of the new corporate culture. The implementation team has to help the business leader to define the vision of the new corporate culture and to help to explain the vision to the rest of the top management.
2. The implementation team has to get the commitment of the top management to the vision of the new corporate culture. The vision is not about the exact definition of the new corporate culture, it is about the dream the top management wants to reach.
3. The implementation team has to measure the current corporate culture to find out the current status of the organization. It sounds pretty difficult to measure the corporate culture, but there are many tools to measure the corporate culture. The team has to know, the corporate culture is not measured just by the questionnaires for the employees, it has to monitor and describe the main processes in the organization to find out its setup.
4. The top management has to see the review of the current corporate culture and the potential gaps with the vision of the new corporate culture. The gaps are basis for the implementation project charter. The top management has to agree with the review of the current corporate culture and the identified gaps as they can expect the changes in the organization.
5. The implementation team has to prepare the new content for the corporate culture and to define the dream status of the organization. The corporate culture is driven by the goals and visions of the organization and they have to be agreed and the people have to understand the details of goals and visions. The top management has to define the values of the organization as it sets the standards for the behavior of employees.
6. The implementation team has to communicate the new vision, goals and values to employees. The implementation team has to communicate the corporate culture stories and the new sets of positive behavior in the organization. This step is very important, as the employees have to understand the main principles of the new corporate culture. The implementation team has to be ready to receive a lot of questions from employees and the team has to prepare a lot of examples for the demonstration of the new corporate culture.
7. The implementation does not end with the communication of the new corporate culture. The management and the employees have to go through the training about the new values, visions and the resulting corporate culture. The top management has to be trained to make decision aligned with the new corporate culture and the decisions have to be explained against the new visions and values as the employees can be a clear link between the new corporate culture and the management decisions.

The steps to the new corporate culture are not short and the project cannot be finished within several weeks, the real results are produced after several years from the initial decision to implement the new high performance corporate culture.