How clearly is your organization’s culture articulated and disseminated through the company?

Our reader poll today asks: How clearly is your organization’s culture articulated and disseminated through the company?

• Very: we have clear statements of our culture and everyone knows and understands it 38.59%
• Somewhat: people generally know what our culture is but there is some lack of clarity 34.65%
• Not very: we have conflicting views of culture and no one can really articulate it 20.47%
• Not at all: what’s culture? 6.29%

Culture drives execution. Culture is the sum of your daily actions. If your desired culture isn’t clearly defined and disseminated, you’re leaving it up to people’s discretion and judgment as to how they should act. Absent guidance, they’ll do the best they can but their choices might not be consistent with the culture you’re trying to build. Invest the time in defining that culture. Be clear about what behaviors are or are not acceptable. Help people understand what the aspiration is for how your organization will function. Be sure you’re routinely disseminating and reinforcing that culture. Sharing it once isn’t enough. Those cultural messages need to be projected as often as possible. Remember – you have new hires all the time and people get busy which makes it easy to forget a “culture meeting” you had a month ago. Celebrate when people take actions exemplifying your culture – share those stories so people feel rewarded and others can see what “good” looks like. It will take a while at first to start shifting the culture but eventually the flywheel starts spinning because people see others around them behaving in a culturally-consistent way.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.