It's all about culture

News Corporation, the banking sector, Apple and the John Lewis Partnership. One thing that unites them all is culture. To be clear, they all have different cultures but it is their culture that makes them stand out, and in some instances (Banking and News Corp) for the wrong reasons.

So why is culture deemed to be so hard to grasp, difficult to manage and at times fluffy and irrelevant, when in fact it clearly has the power to destroy or make an organisation successful?

When we think about culture what we really mean is 'what it's like to work here', which really means 'how does it make me feel'.

Feel - what managers want to talk about feelings when they have sales to make and customers to keep happy? Maybe it's about time more managers and leaders did start to consider how people feel about the work they do and how they do it.

Putting aside those organisations who have created cultures that provided short-term gains but will cause long-term damage, think about the benefits of getting culture right.

Employee retention, high satisfaction rates, better productivity, reduced silo thinking, shared aims and values, a unit of people built on trust and confidence.

With many organisations going through re-structuring programmes, changing strategy, re-focusing their efforts and asking more of their people maybe one route to success is not to focus on the financials but focus on the culture and watch the financials grow as a result.

Great Culture = Great People = Great Service = Customers Loyalty = Profits = Sustainability