Bringing Strategy to Life:
Aligning your corporate culture with business goals

Leaders of high-performance companies understand that a corporate culture that is aligned with its strategic priorities helps the organization achieve business success. The challenge: achieving alignment and sustaining it over the long term.
High Performance: As Unique as a Company Itself
One of the most striking characteristics of highperformance organizations is the level of harmony between business strategy and organization culture that they manage to achieve and sustain over time. A manufacturer competing chiefly on cost and efficiency, for instance, requires a culture very different from that of a luxury goods retailer for which personalized customer attention is the ultimate differentiator. “High performance” means different things in companies competing on different strategic priorities across industry sectors. In short, the right high-performance environment is one that helps a company achieve a specific set of business requirements. In a high-performance organization, workplace practices must actively influence the employee behaviors needed to execute its strategy and reinforce its market focus. behaviors of leaders are critical in establishing a culture that aligns with the business strategy. But, certainly, this is easier said than done. In fact, many companies’ cultures are not aligned with their business objectives, because their leaders, who by and large focus on the financial and operational aspects of the business, simply allow corporate culture to evolve. In some cases, the responsibilities of day-to-day management intrude, or leaders do not have the tools necessary to identify and close the gaps between culture and strategy. When the culture and strategy align, both people and functions work toward a common purpose. For example, a company that relies on customer