To build a winning a team and a successful organization you must create a culture of greatness.
It’s the most important thing a leader can do because culture drives behavior, behavior drives habits and habits create the future. As the leaders at Apple say, “Culture beats strategy all day long.”
When you create a culture of greatness, you create a collective mindset in your organization that expects great things to happen—even during challenging times. You expect your people to be their best, you make it a priority to coach them to be their best and, most of all, you create a work environment that fuels them to be their best.
A culture of greatness creates an expectation that everyone in the organization be committed to excellence. It requires leaders and managers to put the right people in the right positions where they are humble and hungry and willing to work harder than everyone else. A culture of greatness dictates that each person use his or her gifts and strengths to serve the purpose and mission of the organization. And it means that you don’t just bring in the best people, but you also bring out the best in your people.
If you are thinking that this sounds like common sense, it is. But unfortunately, far too many organizations expect their people to be their best but they don’t invest their time and energy to help them be their best, nor do they create an environment that is conducive to success. They want great results but they are not willing to do what it takes to create a culture of greatness.
A culture of greatness requires that you find the right people that fit your culture. Then you coach them, develop them, mentor them, train them and empower them to do what they do best. As part of this process, you develop positive leaders who share positive energy throughout the organization because positive energy flows from the top down. You also don’t allow negativity to sabotage the morale, performance and success or your organization. You deal with negativity at the cultural level so your people can spend their time focusing on their work instead of fighting energy vampires. And you find countless ways to enhance communication, build trust and create engaged relationships that are the foundation upon which winning teams are built.
If creating a culture of greatness sounds like a lot of work, it is, but not as much work as dealing with the crises, problems and challenges associated with negative, dysfunctional and sub-par cultures. While most organizations waste a lot of time putting out fires, you can spend your time building a great organization that rises above the competition.
This post is a guest post by Jon Gordon. Jon is the Wall Street Journal and international bestselling author of a number of books including The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work and Team with Positive Energy, and his latest, The Seed: Finding Purpose and Happiness in Life and Work. Learn more at www.JonGordon.com. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonGordon11 or Facebook www.facebook.com/jongordonpage .
This is a very concise, well-written article about leadership culture. You see it in those companies that continue to perform over many years such as Procter & Gamble. Instilling this ethic into weak organizations is particularly difficult because the problems usually begin at the top. The real target for this article is members of the board of directors because it is this group that can change or mandate this behavoir in the C-Suite.
Totally agree. Hopefully many in the C-suite find their way to this post. Thanks John.
I think what is missing in the piece is not what a culture of greatness looks like, but instead how do we measure the factors that define the culture. Moreover, I think it is important for leadership to first define where the culture is now and where they want to be in the future. The challenge becomes developing a change plan and implementing it. Easier said then done!
Ray, we’ll have to get after Jon Gordon about writing another examining what that culture looks like. I think one challenge, though, is that each culture is probably going to look different.
Awesome post! I completely agree with what you wrote here. Here is my questions: How do you change a culture to this? For instance, if you are working in an organization that has a culture of mediocrity and “that’s the way we have always done it,” how do you overhaul that?
Thanks Noah. John Kotter’s work on Leading Change has some great ideas for culture change. Highly recommended.