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The ability to build strong cultures is a critical skill for leaders, and should be a top priority for their training, development, and education. This article addresses the need for leaders at all levels of an organization to be skilled at building cultures capable of achieving excellent results and bringing out the best in people, and offers specific advice on how to do so. The article draws from the extensive research available on building cultures and also includes lessons learned from the legendary turn-around of the culture and resulting success of Ford Motor Company by former CEO Alan Mulally.
Keywords: culture, building culture, leadership, organizational success, Alan Mulally
INTRODUCTION
Many of the most profitable organizations attribute their success to their culture. Southwest Airlines and Zappos are famous for consciously managing their cultures, but other lesser-known companies like Salesforce and Hubspot also believe their success is a direct result of their proactive management of culture. There is considerable research that demonstrates the important role culture plays in the performance and success or failure of organizations and groups of all types and sizes. Because of the impact of culture, a case could be made that building culture is a critical skill for leaders and should be a top priority in the training, development, and education of leaders at all levels of an organization. Indeed, experts on leadership and culture like Edgar Schein believe that culture building is the most important leadership skill.
Despite the growing body of research, articles, and books showing the impact of culture, many leaders are either not aware of the available research, confused trying to sort through and make sense of the various perspectives on culture, or are unclear about what they specifically need to do to build culture. This dilemma is likely to result in misunderstandings about culture and failed efforts in trying to build it. In this article, we review research on organizational culture, and offer ten practical actions leaders can take in building strong cultures. The article also provides a questionnaire based on the ten actions that can be used to evaluate a leader's skills in building culture. In addition, a case history based on dialogs with the former CEO of Ford Motor Company, Alan Mulally, is presented that...