Culture is the Key

Culture is the trump card for success. Cultivating a healthy culture is the most important thing we do. Why? Because culture is not what we do or how we do it, it’s who we are as an organization. Peter Drucker famously coined the phrase “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This doesn’t mean systems and strategy are not important, it’s just a reminder that a good culture is our trump card for success!

You see, a good culture will make us right when we’re wrong. On the flip side, a bad culture will make us wrong when we are right! Culture is always the trump card of successful organizations. So, if we want to have success and be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us, we must work tirelessly toward cultivating the right culture.

When it comes to cultivating culture, a leader’s greatest responsibility is bringing clarity to everyone’s role in the process. Everyone in an organization plays a role in cultivating its culture. Every team member has to be involved in the process, and when they’re not it just means they are cultivating a different culture. Perhaps the two greatest dangers to cultivating a winning culture are unclear roles and team members attempting to build their own culture within the organization!

So, what are the roles of culture cultivation? Everyone on your team should be walking in one of the following three roles. If they are not walking in the right posture, they will cause more damage to the culture than good. The key is helping everyone in the organization find their role when it comes to cultivating culture. Here are the three roles of culture cultivation.

3 Roles of Culture Cultivation

1. Culture Creators
2. Culture Carriers
3. Culture Correctors

Everyone on your team is either a culture creator, a culture carrier, or a culture corrector. People in the right roles it is glorious! In the wrong roles they are disastrous!

Culture Creators

Culture creators are the people responsible for creating the culture in an organization or on a team. Generally, an organization will have a primary culture creator along with a few secondary creators. These are the people who set the tone and direction for the team. They are the decision makers that decide who the organization will be and what it should look and feel like on a daily basis.

Culture Carriers

Culture carriers are the most prevalent people in the organization. These are the people who hear the culture, take it to heart, and carry it with them into every room and every meeting. As they go, so does your culture. Everyone in the organization can’t be a culture creator or corrector, but everyone should be a culture carrier. Culture carriers are the culture because they are the physical embodiment of the mission on the walls. They are also highly contagious!

If you have the right people carrying your culture, it will spread and multiply across the entire organization. If you have people carrying the wrong culture, it will spread just as quickly. The right people carrying your culture will spread life, while the wrong people will spread disfunction. Culture carriers are the most important people in the organization! So make sure you hire the right people for these roles and keep your hands on the pulse of the culture carriers on your team.

Culture Corrector

One thing is for sure, culture is always trying to drift off course. Where is it drifting to? you may ask? Well, that’s easy, your culture is always drifting toward the least engaged person on your team. The people who are least engaged and have the least ownership will drive a quick cultural climate change if it is not corrected swiftly. This is where culture correctors come in. A culture corrector is someone who carries the culture and corrects it anywhere and with anyone where they see it veering off course. Sometimes it goes off course because people are hurt or angry. Other times it may be because a team member is lethargic. They may be passionate, but about building their own kingdom rather than the organization’s! Regardless of why the culture is drifting, a culture corrector will lead in a way to bring the healing, energy, or vision needed to correct the drift.

When it comes to leadership, culture is key. Culture is too important to ignore, and in order to create the culture you want ,everyone in the organization needs to know which role they are in. Whether they are creating culture, carrying it, or correcting it, they need to own it. Remember, your organization’s culture is only as good as what the weakest member of your team says it is. Culture is too important to miss, so cultivate it wisely!