Corporate culture - the secret sauce

It shouldn’t be that way. Culture is too important to be left to chance. It’s an important ingredient to your organisation’s success.
Let’s start with a definition. Management expert Ed Schein defines culture as “the residue of success, the accumulated wisdom of what does work and does not work”, and this can make or break a company.
Compare the two Kodak siblings: Eastman Chemical is thriving today because its leaders adhered to the company’s culture of innovation and efficiency. Eastman Kodak, on the other hand, a giant in its heyday, is now a fraction of itself. Kodak remained stuck in the past, having abandoned the culture of innovation that made it successful.
How does an organisation create and sustain a successful culture? Start with the organisation’s vision and values.
If you ask your leadership team what made them successful in the past, or what will help to sustain success in the future, you’ll notice a pattern. Phrases like “customer focus”, “operational excellence”, “continuous improvement” and “integrity” may emerge. I call these the organisation’s core values – ingredients to the corporate culture, that is, the secret sauce.
For Apple, it’s innovation. In 1997 when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he proclaimed: “At Apple, we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better!” For Siam Cement Groutp, it’s about adherence to fairness, a belief in the value of the individual, a dedication to excellence and concern for social responsibility.
Next task is to contextualise these values into behaviour for your employees to follow. If customer focus is a core value of yours, translate it to actions for your sales, finance and even information-technology departments. In doing so, you make it relevant to the daily lives of your employees, and take it beyond the usual mumbo-jumbo you see meaninglessly posted on walls.
Now, ensure that all leaders become culture ambassadors. Your leaders must walk the talk. Without their cooperation, this entire exercise in company culture will fail.
Steve Jobs understood how important it was for leaders to lead the company’s culture, saying: “If we changed our core values and start letting it slide, I can’t do that, I’d rather quit.”
Companies in the top half of corporate culture scores have 2.5 times the EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) and more than five times the sales growth than those in the bottom half, according to the “Denison Organisational Culture Survey”.
Then communicate your values. The most effective method is storytelling. In the same way that we tell stories to our children, your managers must tell the stories to employees. Stories quickly enter the psyche of employees and it won’t be long before you see behavioural changes in them that reflect your organisation’s culture.
A great culture is a thing to be protected. Hire the right people. Only those who fit with your culture should be hired, even if they lack some of the required skills. Why? Because it’s cheaper to train hard skills than to change an employee’s mindset. Soon you will outperform the competition.
So next time you draft your business strategy, don’t forget the secret sauce: corporate culture.

SUVIT CHANSRICHAWLA is next-generation HR consultant under the brand Serendipity & Co, a partner of the Curve Group in Thailand.