I am obsessive when it comes to discussing, studying and building culture.
As much as I love speaking on stage in front of thousands of people or partnering and working side by side with a senior leadership team to drive cultural excellence, those are not my favorite aspects of my work.
There is nothing I love more than the pre-work I do for every speaking engagement and consulting project. Maybe it is the athlete in me that still obsesses over the preparatory work that is needed to perform to the best of my ability and make an extraordinary impact, but I truly love that part of the process.
A great culture does not emerge by itself. It requires extensive planning, in-depth internal research, mental shifts, collaboration and more.
And I believe this is an important part of the process when it comes to building an extraordinary culture in a business or organization. It’s the preparation. A great culture does not emerge by itself. It requires extensive planning, in-depth internal research, mental shifts, collaboration and more.
Whether it’s a 60-minute keynote speech or a year-long journey with a client to create and drive organizational change, every situation needs a unique perspective and implementation strategy.
Every organization has its own set of challenges and goals, so one of the first things I do is sit down with the senior leadership team and have several lengthy conversations. We delve deeply into where they are now, where they aspire to be, what their current strategy is and exactly what they expect from me in a partnership role moving forward. It is essential to know how and where I can help.
What is culture?
Culture is the lifeblood of organizational excellence. The core. The energy. The genetic code. It is front-and-center for leaders who want to improve performance and strategic alignment. It is an organization’s heart and soul.
When you see a high-performing organization that achieves excellence in nearly every aspect of its operations, I will show you a company with an exceptional commitment to fostering and enhancing its culture.
Simply put, it is how well an organization does everything behind closed doors. When you see a high-performing organization that achieves excellence in nearly every aspect of its operations, I will show you a company with an exceptional commitment to fostering and enhancing its culture. The deep-seated purpose of an organization, what it does daily and the level of impact it has both internally and externally are all aspects of its culture.
Regardless of what a leader says their organizational culture is, the deciding factor lies in the collective mindsets, repeated efforts and actions and consistent results experienced both inside and outside the organization.
What is the impact of culture?
Organizational culture, in my opinion, is like the human body.
In so many ways, the human body is fascinating. Every living human being has a set of predetermined genes and DNA that are specific to them and their existence in this world.
We used to believe that the genes we were born with determined our fate. It has now been discovered, thanks to advances in modern research and medicine, that our genes only play a role in how we live and the overall quality of our lives. The difference now is that we can raise the bar in terms of overall quality and health.
Despite our DNA, we can alter the aging process and even reverse it by consuming nourishing foods, managing stress effectively, prioritizing a weekly fitness routine and investing in positive and healthy relationships. The human body has approximately 37 trillion cells, with each cell playing an important role in how we age, our psychological state and, ultimately, how long we live.
Just as our DNA and the trillions of cells in our bodies are influenced positively or negatively by our daily habits and environment, the same can be said for organizational culture.
We can’t see our DNA or the cells that make up the human body, or how we go about our daily lives, so we rarely think about them, but we know they exist. What we care about most is how we look on the beach or whether we like what we see when we look in the mirror. Every part of our lives is affected by how well every cell in our body works, from how well we do at work to how happy we feel to the results of our blood work panels at our annual physical.
In some ways, organizational culture is very similar. Visible to the naked eye are the results that a company has achieved in the marketplace. We can look at the profit-and-loss statement. We can easily track monthly sales and even break it down by division to see which division is meeting their targets and which is not. By looking at the stock price, we can see how a company is perceived on Wall Street. Employee engagement surveys can reveal how employees currently feel about working for a specific company. There are literally hundreds of ways to track an organization’s performance.
Just as our DNA and the trillions of cells in our bodies are influenced positively or negatively by our daily habits and environment, the same can be said for organizational culture. It is not visible to the naked eye, but it is the one thing that enables everything else in an organization to function.
An organization’s culture is its DNA. It is equivalent to what oxygen is to the human body. It is needed for an organization to survive, let alone thrive. We can redirect an organization’s performance by changing its culture, just as we can reverse the aging process in the human body. Whether an organization has a world-class culture or a toxic one, its future depends on how much attention and focus it puts on growing its culture.
The thing about culture is this: whether it was created intentionally or not, every organization has one.
This is an edited extract from Culture Is the Way: How Leaders at Every Level Build an Organization for Speed, Impact, and Excellence by Matt Mayberry (published by Wiley, 2023)
Matt Mayberry is an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker and one of the world’s foremost thought leaders on leadership development and culture. His insights on leadership, culture and business performance have appeared in publications such as Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider and Entrepreneur, as well as on NBC, ABC, Fox Business, ESPN and more.
