Page 23 - MS Year in Review 2017_Neat

true economic liability—not just in an operational sense, but because the culture is
an open invitation to lawsuits and investigation by the Department of Justice.

What do Culture Champions do?

Culture Champions do several things well:

 They define their core values.
 They make sure people understand and embrace their core values.
 They translate their core values into behavioral norms.
 They monitor behavior to assess consistency vis a vis cultural values and

norms.
 They set specific measurable goals to improve their culture and

culture management.
 They measure improvements in their culture36.
 They have cultural improvement initiatives to continuously improve the

effectiveness of their culture management and their core values.

In addition to the above, they also they tend to make sure that their core values
reflect five key areas that our published empirical research has indicated are
drivers of financial performance and critical to organizational success.37

What does a “Cultural Frankenstein” do or not do?

In addition to typically not doing the things listed above, a Culture
Frankenstein does several other things that differ from culture champions:

 They tend to have either stated or implicit dysfunctional values or norms
that are contrary to good cultural practice in the treatment of customers
and their employees.

 They tend to harshly punish those who object or are “whistle blowers”
about these dysfunctional values and norms.

36 Culture measurement is possible as we have shown in Eric Flamholtz, “Corporate Culture and the
Bottom line,” European Management Journal, 2001 and Eric Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle, Corporate
Culture: The Ultimate Strategic Asset, Stanford University Press, 2016.
37 See Eric Flamholtz, “Corporate Culture and the Bottom line,” European Management Journal, 2001; and Eric Flamholtz,
and, Rangapriya Narasimhan-Kannan “Differential Impact of Culture upon Financial Performance: An Empirical investigation,”
European Management Journal, 2005, 23 (1), pp. 50-64.

22

© Management Systems Consulting Corporation, 2018. All rights reserved