Page 123 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

112 HBR Leader’s Handbook

Offer incentives
Positive reinforcement of cultural behaviors is powerful. When organiza-
tional members see that the people who are rewarded, promoted, and rec-
ognized are those who exhibit the desired cultural behaviors, it provides a
strong incentive to also act in those ways. You also can reinforce the de-
sired behaviors by selecting people for key assignments who already have
those behaviors, or who have the potential to do so.
Putting this all together, of course, takes a lot of hard work and isn’t
accomplished overnight. Over the long term, however, building a culture
that helps you advance your strategic goals, and that people feel good
about, can have an enormous impact on your organization and can re-
inforce the social contract. It also can be incredibly rewarding for you as a
leader. When reflecting on his tenure as dean of Haas Business School at
the University of California, Berkeley, Richard Lyons told us that aligning
the school with a concise set of cultural principles was perhaps the most
significant thing he had achieved because it had become such a key factor
in attracting students and faculty to the school. Shaping the culture also
shaped his legacy: “It has put heart and soul into the institution that will
outlive me.”
The practices we’ve described throughout this chapter are not se-
quential steps, nor one-off activities. Instead, in order to create a high-
achievement and high-morale organization, you need to continually
practice these elements, determining the right way to approach them as
your organization continues to change. Bringing people on board to sup-
port your vision and strategy requires constantly assessing and adjusting
these different elements over time.
But done well, you can attract talent for years to come. Mastering the
steps we’ve described and creating a culture that blends both organiza-
tional and personal success is hard work, and many of the associated skills
for doing this may not come naturally. Taking some of these actions may
also require uncomfortable discussions, such as when you need to be tough
about performance feedback or promotions or rewards. Getting the right
balance between organizational and personal success may not win you any