This Is How You Don’t Develop An Organizational Culture

How do you develop an organizational culture? It starts with practicing what you preach on a day to day basis; your values and beliefs. And you have to do that consistently, not every once in a while.

There are many consulting company’s out there who sell “culture” that don’t agree with me. Below is one such example from a company in Mexico, a friend of mine sent me a proposal from a company that’s consulting where he works at:

wallace international what not to do culture

The document is in spanish. There are many suggestions that are wrong in this document, but to summarize: they advice that the organization put one value into action per month.

Yes, one value per month. So if the company has 6 – 10 values, that means they’ll spend half to almost a year supposedly practicing their values. Ok, and then what?!

If you’re consulting for a company, via zoom calls, you just can’t tell a client to practice a value per month. As I said at the beginning, you practice what you preach on a day to day basis; not once a month.

For organizational culture to develop, I advise organizations to create a mechanism where people are recognized when their colleagues, managers see them put a core value into action. It has to be peer to peer, not manager to employee; managers can also be recognized by employees.


Bottom line: You don’t create company culture one value per month, you do it consistently, day to day putting into action all your values.