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Table 24.1 provides an outline of the culture plan developed for an imaginary company.

Table 24.1 example culture plan summary page

Aspect Culture’s choices Question answered
Purpose To serve our customers to make their lives better. Why are we here?
Identity We will be famous for customer intimacy Who are we?What do we want to be famous for?
Values service, empathy, creative solutions What motivates our culture?
Capability
  1. Develop leadership communication skills.
    By November
    Project leader Sue Smith.
  2. Ritualise our culture.
    By June
    Project leader Mark Richards.
  3. Develop thought leadership.
    By 2016
    Project leader Alison Taylor.
 What do we need to be capable of in this culture?
Behaviour Clarify with all employees which behaviours they consider above and below the line. Communicate to everyone the finalised correlated list of behaviours. Invite everyone to to take ownership and provide feedback to align behaviours with the list. Which behaviours are above or below the line?
Environment Develop a more attractive employee value proposition by December.Project leader George Harrison.Exploring opportunities for working remotely by July.Project leader Rebecca Mzarkia.Conduct customer delight survey within the next 90 days.Project leader Jenny Chiswick. Where and when are events occurring that affect our culture?

All six aspects of the culture are identified in the left-hand column.

The middle column of the table outlines either the position the company has chosen to take for each of these aspects, or the specific projects the company has committed to launch in order to support the culture to grow and align with the business strategy.

The right-hand column highlights the question that is answered for the culture by considering this aspect of a culture. For example, for the purpose aspect of the culture plan, you can see that the question answered is: ‘Why does this culture exist?’ The identity aspect of the culture has the question: ‘What do we want to be famous for — price, product or service?’ In highlighting the specific questions that are answered by considering each aspect of the culture, you can begin to see how the plan addresses all the questions your culture might raise.

Culture plan summary

Table 24.1 is a high-level overview of the culture plan. You should elaborate on each aspect shown in this table using additional pages of information to create a more complete report of your culture plan. For example, for each aspect you might provide more in-depth information to identify what action is being taken, what budget is required, who is head of this project and what time frames you are working to. For example, the capability aspect of the table could be elaborated on and look something like this:

Elaborated culture capability

Projects

Culture planning in practice

As an example of a culture plan being put into practice, let me share with you an example of how my client High Performance Sport New Zealand developed, completed and initiated their culture plan. Their aim was to help the organisation continue to do an outstanding job supporting sports and coaches from all sorts of codes to develop their elite athletes to represent New Zealand at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and beyond. The approach and commitment of High Performance Sport New Zealand to their culture plan was exemplary, as we might expect from high performance professionals. 

An internal Culture Team was established and led by the passionate Susan Thomason (Lead Performance Life and Psychology) and Chris Morrison (High Performance Leader Capability). Chief Executive Alex Baumann immediately saw the potential of the process, and to this day continues to champion the ongoing work of the culture plan’s development. Work on the culture planning process commenced, starting with the top three aspects of purpose, identity and values. The purpose, identity and values that had been identified were developed with a large percentage of the organisation’s employees. Feedback was gathered and used for refining the purpose, identity and values. Monthly review sessions were held by the Culture Team, and an additional monthly review was held with me as their external adviser. Following this a workshop day was organised to include leaders from all key departments around the nation to refine the capability aspects of the plan. Once that was achieved, the Culture Team refined the final three aspects of the plan. The final written culture plan was drawn up, designed, laid out and printed. A final launch event, involving all available employees and run in an interactive and creative manner, was held. It involved each department sharing how they were going to contribute to keeping the plan alive and activated in the organisation. Six-monthly reviews by cross-departmental discussion groups were to follow up by reviewing any strong signs of trust that had developed across the culture, along with clear signs that the culture’s values were shared. These two areas of trust and values are key to the ongoing social capacity of the culture. Any areas of concern were raised, recorded and referred to the culture plan team to consider and recommend resolutions.

The culture plan will be reviewed regularly as the organisation progresses towards the Rio Olympics. In particular, I have encouraged the culture planning team to consider three important questions as part of continuing review process:

  • What did you set out to achieve with your culture plan?
  • What did you actually achieve with your culture plan (which could of course be significantly different than what you set out to achieve)?
  • What actually happened as a result of implementing the culture plan?

As a result of reviewing the culture plan using these three questions, important lessons and directions the culture has taken can be understood and explored. Sometimes the unplanned aspects of culture development prove to be more beneficial than was planned. And sometimes they don’t. The trick is to be aware of the specific changes that are occurring so that realignment can be planned and implemented.

Although I have suggested that the culture planning group review the culture in this manner every six months, that is because the timing suits their cultural and strategic needs. In a faster moving corporate culture, I often advise the culture planning team to review the culture every 90 days. This may sound like a short period of time to be reviewing your culture, but I have found that in the commercial setting a culture can change quite dramatically within just one financial quarter. In developing a culture plan for your organisation, you should select a review schedule that suits your organisational strategic and cultural needs.

To finish our overview of culture planning, let me offer a few words of advice. First, although you may be about to start the culture plan, you should never consider it finished. Especially for the aspects of capability, behaviour and environment, there is sure to be ongoing development work required by your organisation just to keep abreast of the changing world and markets around you. Second, consider setting up a small team of no more than seven people to coordinate and oversee the culture plan. Any more than seven people, I have found, slows the whole process up unnecessarily. Finally, do not be put off by the few cynics or sceptics who may voice their dissent concerning working on culture. Simply lift your efforts and enthusiasm and place your emphasis on the majority’s positive support. Believe me, most people will be positive, as most people want to be a part of culture worth contributing to. It is simply human nature.