Shawn explores the role of culture in performance at organizations:

“Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation. A strong culture flourishes with a clear set of values and norms that actively guide the way a company operates. Employees are actively and passionately engaged in the business, operating from a sense of confidence and empowerment rather than navigating their days through miserably extensive procedures and mind-numbing bureaucracy. Performance-oriented cultures possess statistically better financial growth, with high employee involvement, strong internal communication, and an acceptance of a healthy level of risk-taking in order to achieve new levels of innovation. “

Key points:
– Long-term organizational validity/endurance requires a strong and vibrant culture.
– Significant benefits from a vibrant culture, eg., focus, motivation, and cohesion, along others.
– Culture can be good (it inspires) or bad (it wears you down).
– There are some specific things leaders can do to build a strong culture.

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