As leaders, the day-to-day environment that we operate in will always be a major factor in determining whether we are successful in our efforts to achieve positive outcomes that exceed expectations. The simple fact will come as a surprise to virtually no one. What might surprise you is the number of organizations that spent very little time defining, refining, and nurturing, something that has so much to do with their potential success.

The interesting characteristic of a corporate culture is that it is still present regardless of how little time you may have spent developing it. You either have a culture by design or a culture by default, but in either case, you have an environment that affects every team member daily. Your organization’s culture is much like an ecosystem. The present conditions will be a major determinant of whether your business model grows and prospers…or withers and fails to reach its full potential. I believe that so few companies spend time proactively working on their corporate culture, not because they don’t recognize that it’s crucial to their success, but because they don’t know where to start on such a seemingly insurmountable task.

A simple first step is to recognize that your corporate culture reflects your organizational value system and a collection of its guiding principles. Start there. Your corporate values are often seen in conjunction with a mission or value statement. If you don’t have a defined mission or value statement, you have a culture by default. Ask three key people in the organization to describe the organization’s mission. If you get three different answers, you know exactly where to start. If all three of these key contributors define the corporate mission the same way, ask them to explain what values are prevalent in the organization to make accomplishing this mission more likely. Once again, if you see a high degree of similarity in their answers, you’re working with a culture by design. Now you are ready to run through a quick checklist of five simple questions that will help you build a stronger organizational culture or strengthen your current bespoke culture. Ask your key team members or your trusted culture coalition these questions

What are we doing to inspire all employees to achieve high performance?

Are we empowering employees to make decisions and seek improvements at the management level closest to them?

Are we rewarding employees based on individual and group performance?

What can we do to create a challenging but more satisfying work environment?

And lastly, do we that are well-defined and aligned with our team members?

Now that you have solicited this critical feedback, you have valuable information to work with and exactly what you need to move your organization from a culture of default into the elite status of a culture by design.