The Culture Blueprint: A Guide to Building the High-Performance WorkplaceA few thought provoking excerpts from, The Culture Blueprint: A Guide to Building the High-Performance Workplace, by Robert Richman:

Culture change is not a strategy or an initiative. This is a total mind shift. Once you truly experience it, you can’t go back.

Without taking care of your people, who will deliver? In order to take care of others, you must take care of yourself. That is why your own team’s needs (not wants, but needs) come before the customers.’

Values are the DNA of any organization…..values provide a decision-making framework… they can be re-engineered to create the outcome and experience you desire within your organization…values attract the right people and repel the wrong people (and that includes customers).

You know you are truly committed when you are willing to hire and fire by the values of the company. This means that if someone is a great performer but they do not meet every value, then you must not bring them on board. And if they violate a core value, you must be willing to terminate their employment, immediately.

Now, you may not have a business where people can get killed, but you are killing people’s ideas constantly by making them feel unsafe in very subtle ways. And no one will tell you this because they’re either afraid of losing their job, or they don’t realize it because it’s that subtle.

Performance metrics are a group responsibility: We take it on as a team. Culture is an individual responsibility: We each are fully responsible.

Reflection is another one of the most under-utilized activities in business today. Everything moves so fast that we rarely take a moment to stop, breathe, and say what’s working and what’s not.

Culture is a feeling, so how you feel is ultimately guiding the culture of your organization. Do you feel stressed, constantly in a rush? Not having fun? Then no matter what you say, you are contributing to a culture that values that. Your state of being is your highest leverage tool. Shifting a feeling is an instant culture change.