Corporate Culture and Strategy Execution
By: Sorin Dumitrascu
Tags: Strategic Planning, Strategic Thinking, Business, Strategic Design, Organizational Culture

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

It’s no good having all tiers of the organizational chart focused on getting things done if the company culture simply doesn’t support delivering on plans. The third cornerstone is creating and managing a culture of execution.

There are many benefits of putting in place a culture that promotes execution. There’s an increased likelihood that your company will follow through on its promises. Other benefits include having your workforce aligned toward the same goals, having a clear direction, and feeling appreciated.

Strategy execution requires a specific set of behaviors and techniques. In order to produce strategic results, you need to change the corporate culture to focus on those goals. In other words, you need to change people’s behavior.

In order to change behaviors, company leaders need to identify relevant beliefs. Then you can work to change the reward system, which is embedded in culture. Throughout these changes you should use robust communication, always link culture to strategy, and use the power of shared norms.

Provide Vision and Impetus

Now that you have an idea what makes up a strong culture of execution, you have to determine how to achieve it in your own organization. You can follow four steps to manage and create a culture that supports business execution: provide vision and impetus, offer education and time for socializing, communicate, and reward.

It’s vital to strategy execution that employees at all levels understand where the company is trying to go. You must provide a picture of the end result and explain why this cultural change is good for everyone.

So for step one, provide vision and impetus, you must follow three principles.

1. have clear reasons for change — You should provide everyone involved with clear and honest reasons for strategy execution. If you can clearly show employees a record of poor performance and demonstrate how strategy execution will improve it, it’ll be easier for them to accept the change and work together.

2. live the change — The leader of strategy execution is the person who first communicates vision and impetus. So to set the example for the whole organization, you should also live the change. Your actions will speak louder than words with regard to strategy execution. And if you embody the values of the new culture of execution, employees will likely follow suit.

3. get agreement from key players — A strong culture of execution requires that all key players agree on the vision. Effective strategy execution can only happen if employees at all levels buy in. But before that can happen, employees in all key roles must also be actively involved and in agreement.

Education and Socializing

The second step when creating and managing a culture of execution is providing employees with adequate education to ensure they understand the new culture, values, beliefs, and behaviors.

And you should allow time for employees to socialize with coworkers to ensure that employees learn company values, behavior expectations, and social norms and to encourage bonding among employees, which will help create a strong culture of execution.

Communicate and Reward

The third step to create a strong culture of execution is to communicate. Effective communication leads to genuine understanding of strategy execution.

And communication gives further credibility to the vision and reasoning behind the strategy. Communication must be clear, effective, and positive, and it must be directed at the people affected. Also, to be truly effective, communication must be two-way.

The fourth step when changing your corporate culture to one of execution is to reward. You can use a reward system to manage culture of execution by encouraging or discouraging certain behavior. But behavior isn’t the only thing to reward. You must also measure and reward performance. Measure performance in connection to whether employees embody the values and behaviors of the culture of execution.

The third cornerstone in strategy execution is creating and managing a culture of execution. A strong culture of execution must have definitive agreement at all organizational levels about what is valued, and everyone involved must feel intensely about those values.

Also, such a culture values robust dialog, is strategically relevant, has strong shared norms, and rewards desirable behaviors. In order to create a strong culture of execution, you can follow four steps. Step one is to provide vision and impetus so employees understand why strategy execution is necessary.

Step two involves providing education to employees and offering time for socialization. Step three is providing clear, positive, two-way communication. And step four is creating a reward system to encourage execution-focused behavior.