Create sustainable, high-performance cultures and impact the world.

Organizations desiring to leverage culture as a strategic asset are best served when its leaders can link culture change efforts to the ongoing changes associated with strategy execution.

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The need for teams to efficiently reach innovative solutions is at an all-time high. Here are three very different kinds of teams that found success using a common approach.

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Key insights for creating a remarkable workplace culture! It’s been an exceptional year of shared learning through case examples, stories, and posts on best practices, and we’re delighted to share the following blog posts that garnered the highest traffic during the past year. 

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Without conducting a cultural assessment up front, we could have only guessed at the organizational dynamics. Having a cultural assessment gave us the information we needed. If you want reliable information built on solid research that validates clients’ experiences and gives you the levers for change, it's essential to use industry-recognized tools. The rest is up to you! 

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Culture change begins with the leadership team, from CEO to SVPs. Commit to this essential first step and you’ll be on firm footing towards shaping a healthy, high-performing company culture.

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Our Ultimate Culture Conferences allow us to bring visibility to important insights from culture pioneers and progressive leaders. Recently, we shifted our focus to a regional format in partnership with major universities, and in September, we collaborated with the University of Wisconsin Center for Professional and Executive Development (CPED) to host our 1st Regional Ultimate Culture Conference. The following seven “ultimate culture insights” made an impact with the passionate audience of culture experts and change agents.

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La direction d’une organisation procède à la fois d’une fonction et d’un niveau hiérarchique spécifique au sein de l’entreprise. Mais la façon dont nous exerçons notre leadership relève de notre choix. Plus important encore, la façon dont nous travaillons avec nos collègues dirigeants peut nous aider à inspirer le meilleur chez nos équipes, à être de véritables modèles pour les membres de l'organisation au sens large et à façonner notre culture de manière plus positive et constructive.

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We are experiencing a historic shift in how people view the importance of culture and culture change. As a result, most CEOs and other top leaders will be expected to understand and deal with culture challenges proactively, or they will be considered both financially and morally negligent. Yes, financially and morally negligent. We are seeing top leaders held accountable for their own behavior and for unacceptable behavior deep in their organizations at a level we have never witnessed before. This is driven by a much greater culture shift in society—and it is long overdue.

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A key advantage of using group problem-solving simulations is that they make the abstract concept of synergy more concrete by enabling participants to quantify and compare individual versus group performance. It can also help participants understand that synergy is not easily achieved.

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At its core, the role of a Change Agent in culture change is to help leaders solve problems. Big problems, small problems. It begins with steady efforts to facilitate change that accrue into a collective transformation—change that takes place over time. It is more like a journey than a race. And the more stakeholders who join this journey, the better.

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Culture can often be like a wet bar of soap—too slippery to grasp. To harness its force, we first need to understand its nature and dynamics. And there’s no better person to help us get a handle on organizational and team culture than Edgar Schein, one of the world’s most well-known culture pioneers.

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As organizations weigh the effectiveness of their employee feedback programs, companies must consider Feedforward as a way to revitalize and complement their existing processes while re-engaging their employees not in who they were, but who they aspire to become.

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Most leaders have heard the expression, “You need to drive your culture or it will drive your business—for better or worse.” In reality, putting these words into action to achieve real cultural change with sustainable, measurable results is a long-term journey. The payoff is huge. With vision, focus, and investment in the right culture experts, diagnostics, and change processes, a Constructive culture can drive significant business performance.

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The impression many of us have is that successful Olympic athletes are the most competitive human beings on the planet. Yet, the small country of Norway has demonstrated why, paradoxically, competition is not the key to Olympic success. In fact, a competitive focus can be a barrier to Olympic gold, and we’ll discover how this and other ingredients are at work with the Norwegian Olympic team.

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When it comes to shaping a thriving workplace culture, the influence of leaders on their organizations’ overall performance cannot be overemphasized. They serve as role models whose conduct and behavior are expected to align with their organizations’ values. While recent months have provided a deluge of executives and leaders who have lost their way, it’s a compelling time for change agents to help organizations shape their culture for a constructive future.

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For organizations to achieve exponential growth, they need to have leaders who coach. Yes, we still need managers to manage, but to move an organization forward and to achieve rapid momentum toward phenomenal growth, we need the entire workforce engaged. One leader cannot achieve success alone. It takes leadership at all levels and throughout the organization.

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‘Tis the season for reflecting on the year that’s ended and planning for the year we’ve entered. A ritual that often results in…NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS! It’s known that New Year’s resolutions come with an abysmally low success rate—only 8% of people achieve them. Probably as low, if not lower, than the success rate of major organizational changes; such as mergers, reorganizations, and—near-and-dear to the readers of this blog’s hearts—culture change initiatives, which fail at a dismal rate of 70% -- a statistic that has not changed in over 30 years.

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We received our best audience feedback ever after the 3^rd Annual Ultimate Culture Conference. For the first time, one specific speaker insight stood out and was highlighted by numerous attendees. What was this insight about leadership and culture? Why did it resonate so much? I think it’s a sign of the times as culture transitions from a subject of interest for many to the sustainable driver of effectiveness that many feel compelled to nurture, develop or change.

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How many of us like feedback? And how often does it help us versus make us feel disappointed or inadequate? Marshall Goldsmith has turned this technique on its head, providing a fun and helpful way to get answers to a problem or concern you are working on. Feedforward is a fun (yes, fun) and effective way to quickly get a lot of ideas around a challenge you're facing.

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“I don’t know everyone’s name. I’m embarrassed because I think I should know their names.”

When I interviewed the president of a big insurance firm, I didn’t realize that I’d strike a nerve so soon after our conversation began. This was years ago, but my recollection is powerful.

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