Navigate the Crossroads

There is no organizational culture strong enough to make up for lack of clarity about what it takes to perform, to deliver results. This chapter discusses what is perhaps the most important area of special emphasis, performance culture, and the HR leader's influence in building a performance culture. It shares a framework that helps to think through what happens in a performance‐driven culture: shared beliefs, assumptions, norms, consequences, artifacts, heroes, failure and power. These alternatives imply choices and the importance of choosing. To effectively shape culture and ensure it drives business performance, we need to overlay some cultural crossroads we might face‐conscious tradeoffs organizations and their HR leaders can make about the kind of culture they want to create. Make conscious decisions regarding how you want each dimension of culture to take shape and what actions you need to align organizational practices with the culture you are trying to create.