Page 25 - MS Year in Review 2017_Neat

Six Key Steps to Create a Corporate Culture Champion
There are six key steps required to create a corporate culture champion. These
were hinted at above in describing what Culture Champions do well. These are:

1) Define your Company’s core values.
2) Make sure people understand and embrace your core values.
3) Translate their core values into behavioral norms.
4) Monitor behavior to assess consistency vis a vis cultural values and norms.
5) Set specific measurable goals to improve their culture and culture

management
6) Measure improvements in their culture
Each step is examined in turn below.

Define your Company’s core values.
The first step to manage culture effectively and become a culture champion is
to define your company’s core values. “Values” are what are most
important to a company. Ideally your values should include the five “key
value areas” which our published empirical research has identified as critical
to organizational success and drivers of financial performance.40 These “key
value areas” are: 1) treatment of customers, 2) treatment of people
(employees) 3) standards of performance and accountability, 4) openness to
innovation and change, and 5) company process orientation.41
Unfortunately, most companies do not develop core values for each of these
key culture areas. Instead, they simply identify what they think are
important values to them. As a result, and tend to miss two of three of these
key values areas.

40 See Eric Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle, Corporate Culture: The Ultimate Strategic Asset, Stanford
University Press, 2016.
41 For further explanation, see Ibid.

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