An organizational culture goes beyond mission statements and employee handbooks. It is the everyday reality of the workplace. The culture of an organization is its fundamental nature, the essence of how people interact and work as a team to achieve organizational growth. Organizational culture can manifest itself in a variety of ways, including leadership behaviours, communication styles, team bonding and internally distributed messages.
Below are steps to creating a strong, and lasting, and unstoppable organizational structure
1. Create a compelling vision: Once a team within an organization understands “what” they are doing or delivering, their thoughts, decisions and actions would be aligned to it. An inconsistent or confusing vision cannot guide thoughts, decisions or actions of your team. So it is advisable to keep your vision memorable, direct and achievable.
2. Define a common language, values and standards: To achieve a successful organizational culture, every member of your team must be in sync and speak in one voice about the values of the organisation. Document and communicate those values in which your organization rests on if you must. There is a need for this common language to be understood by everyone in the company; from the CEO down to the regular staff.
Your organization must also have a common set of values, which are your company’s principles, and a common set of standards which will measure how your principles are being upheld.
A stable culture can only be achieved when the values, standards and values of the organization are in sync.
3. Optimize your hiring process to ensure you are bringing in the right people: In order to build a sustainable culture, bringing in the right people is pivotal. Hire the right set of individuals who appreciate your culture and values and whose personalities would blend well with the existing culture and bring something tangible to the organization.
4. Find ways to constantly reinforce your core values: Setting programs and initiatives which would occasionally reiterate the core values that make up the key components of your culture is important to keeping the organizational culture thriving.
5. Lead by example: Building an organizational culture begins with its leader. The leader of an organization should breathe and live by the core values set. Every leader needs to be a reflection of the values of the company and be its strongest promoter.
Remember, the road to success is not smooth, there will always be challenges until you finally get it right. The culture of an organization is a big difference-maker in attracting and retaining great people – as well as in being a high performing business too
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