Four Key Skills to Change Company Culture

Tuesday, November 27, 2012 2:00pm - 3:00pm EST   

Gadgets are smart these days. You can buy a refrigerator that tells you you’re out of milk. Your car knows when its tires are low. You can even ask your mobile phone for parenting advice. We owe the increasing power of our toys and tools to the fact that all of them now sport powerful operating systems.

Similar to our gadgets, organizations have operating systems. Think of them as cultural operating systems. Both electronic and cultural operating systems provide a set of rules that guide the behavior of the device or the people respectively. For example, when you press the ON button of an iPhone, a whole series of coded rules display an Apple logo, followed by the time of day, your customized wallpaper and an unlock bar.

Similarly, a cultural operating system engages a set of rules that guide the behavior of employees when they enter a high-stakes meeting, react to abrupt organizational changes, or contemplate what to do with discretionary time. But while electronic intelligence is processed by written coded rules, a cultural operating system (COS) is often driven by a combination of written and unwritten rules. For example, executives may have written cultural mandates in the form of values, mission statements, and corporate creeds that prompt employees to take initiative, speak candidly, and act as a team. Yet when you watch what employees actually do, you realize the unwritten rules are avoid risk, defer to the boss and stay in your silo.

Joseph Grenny's latest research and case studies on high-performance cultural operating systems reveal the DNA of organizations that execute superbly and innovate consistently. So what makes for a powerful cultural operating system? VitalSmarts' research shows organizations need four key skills to enable world-class execution and innovation.

 •Individual: Self-directed change

 •Interpersonal: Open dialogue

 •Team: Universal accountability

 •Organizational: Influential leadership

If your organization does not have these four skills, then execution and innovation are not optimized. Joseph Grenny will discuss this in detail and will answer your questions. Joseph Grenny will discuss this in detail at this webinar and answer your questions. Please register for this free webinar