Organizational culture is shaped by behaviors, beliefs, values, and practices. It can provide an advantage to businesses or undermine their success. The document discusses: 1. Building culture requires understanding the current culture and desired changes, focusing on a few critical behaviors, and evolving the culture over time through programs and measurement of progress. 2. Culture is influenced by vision, values, practices, people, narratives, physical space, and must align with business strategy to drive employee fulfillment and customer satisfaction. 3. A framework is provided for cultural evolution that identifies behaviors to change and groups to influence, using formal and informal mechanisms to drive new behaviors before new beliefs.

1. Building Organizational Culture
Prepared by Prashant S Nair

2. Contents
1. Introduction to Organizational Culture
2. How Does Culture Matter in Business?
3. Practical Approach to Culture Building / Culture Evolution Framework
4. Leading Culture Change within Organization

3. Introduction to organizational culture
 Culture is self sustaining patterns on behaving, feeling, thinking & believing
that determine “how we do things around here”
 Self sustaining - culture has inertia
With out a really strong & persistent force, it won’t change its course
 Culture can be an asset that enables, energizes and enhances human behavior
and when wisely utilized it can accelerate and sustain business results
 At its worst, culture can be a drag on productivity and emotional commitment.
It can lead to under performance & undermine long term success
 Every winning culture has a unique personality and soul that cannot be invented or
imposed. Company’s character needs to be discovered from within
A company’s key to success is in its heart and soul

4. Components of Culture (1/2)
Vision
Values
Practices
People
Narrative
Place
 A great culture starts with a vision or mission statement
 They guide a company’s values and provide it with purpose
 A vision statement is a simple but foundational element of culture
 A company’s values are the core of its culture
 While a vision articulates a company’s purpose, values offer a set of
guidelines on the behaviors and mindsets needed to achieve that vision
 Values lose importance unless they are manifested in a company’s practices
 If an organization professes, “people are our greatest asset,” it should also be
ready to invest in people in visible ways
 No company can build a coherent culture without people who either share its
core values or possess the willingness and ability to embrace those values
 Greatest firms in the world have some of the most stringent recruiting policies
 Every organization has a unique history / story
 The ability to unearth that history and craft it into a narrative is a core element
of culture creation
 Open architecture more conducive to certain office behaviors, like
collaboration
 Place - whether geography, architecture, or aesthetic design - impacts the
values and behaviors of people in a workplace

5. Components of Culture (2/2)

6. How does culture matter in business? – (1/2)
Coherent Business
Strategy
Organization Culture
 Structural breakdown
between corporate, BUs,
and support functions
 Responsibilities and
decision rights across
groups
 Performance measures
 Critical systems and
processes
 Value creation choices
articulated in mission,
vision, targets, and
business objectives
 A company’s products,
brands, and customer
Relationships
 All centered on a
coherent set of
capabilities
 Behavioral norms
 Long-standing attitudes
and beliefs
 Lived values
 Accepted style and
approach - common
understanding
 Symbols - visual
identifiers and stories
How will we compete? How will we run the
business?
How will we energize
our people?

7. How does culture matter in business? – (2/2)
 Culture of an organization is the principle source of its competitive advantage & brand
differentiation
 Value driven organizations are the most successful organizations
 Values & behavior drive culture
 Culture drives employee fulfillment
 Employee fulfillment drives customer satisfaction
 Customer satisfaction drives shareholder value

8. Practical Approach to Culture building / Culture Evolution
Framework (1/2)
 A deeply embedded culture does not change very much / very fast.
Major culture replacement requires extensive programs / structural re-design (often hard
and often fail)
 In most cases you don’t need to worry about the entire culture in your organization
 Whenever we deal with culture, we have to break down culture to the person level
 Start with changing behaviors, not mind sets
 Focus on those cultural elements that are most relevant to the specific performance
improvement behaviors with which you are concerned
 Identify which Groups of individuals are likely to be in a position to influence the
relevant cultural priorities
 Use formal & informal mechanisms to make people behave differently even before they
believe
Research suggests b/w 66% to 75% organizational culture change efforts fail

9. Practical Approach to Culture building / Culture Evolution
Framework (2/2)
Culture evolution framework to effectively deal with cultural change in organizations
BusinessObjectives
2.
3.
4. 5.
Culture “FROM” and
“To”
 Understand current culture
 Define aspirations
 Define cultural priorities to be
addressed
 Build on strengths
Critical few behaviors
 Identify the critical few
behaviors that will make the
biggest difference toward
your cultural aspiration
Culture evolution
program
 Design tailored culture
evolution program
 Create implementation work
plan
 Start pilot before roll-out
 Ensure sustainability
Measure
progress
Identify
appropriate
ways to
measure
progress and
to understand
whether the
Culture
evolution
program works

10. Leading culture change within an organization
Underlying
assumptions
 Culture at Org. is
inherently strong
 This initiative is not
aimed at a major
overhaul of the
existing culture
 Objective -
address concern
elements identified
through culture
audit & build a
stronger culture
Identify what our
culture lacks
Already clear from the culture
audit / ESS
Define ideal cultural
aspirations / attributes
Clarity needed on what should
we stand for to realize our vision
Behavioral indicators
outlined
Behavioral manifestations
consistent with your culture to
drive superior business results
Vision / Values
Deployment
Values are deployed with Vision /
Mission. Special interventions for
concern elements in culture
 Set expectations about necessity for change / how will it result in success
 Align the leadership team around a common vision and required behaviors
 A culture of accountability rather than spend energy on formal cultural change
 Encourage leadership to walk the talk. Clarify roles & accountabilities performance metrics
 Communicate and celebrate
SuccessFactors
1.
2.
3.
4.