For Cultural Change
When a business isn’t doing well, its leaders often think about how to change the corporate culture. While they are correct in their assertion that the beliefs and behaviors of their people are at least as important as the strategies they execute (or, in some cases, fail to execute), most efforts at cultural change fail, in part because they are not linked to improving the company’s outcomes. Cultural change gets real only when your aim is execution.

A New Way of Thinking
There’s an adage that holds true in this discussion —we don’t think ourselves into a new way of acting; we act ourselves into a new way of thinking. 
This begins with demystifying the word culture. Stripped to its essence, the culture of an organization is the sum of its shared values, beliefs, and norms of behavior.
Some who endeavor to change an organization’s culture often start with the intention of changing its values — its fundamental principles and standards, such as integrity or respect for the culture. What they should instead focus on changing are the beliefs within a company that influence specific behaviors, things that are conditioned by training and experience. Behaviors are beliefs turned to action, the things that deliver results. To deliver better results, start with examining whether your organization’s ingrained beliefs are helping the business perfect its execution.

Change Behavior by Changing Rewards
A business’ culture defines what gets appreciated, respected, and, ultimately, rewarded; those rewards and their linkage to performance are the foundation of changing behavior. If a company rewards and promotes people for execution, its culture will change. However your organization determines rewards, the goal should be the same — your compensation and reward system must have the right yields. You must reward not simply on strong achievements on numbers, but also on the desirable behaviors that people adopt. Over time, your people will get stronger, as will your financial results.

The Importance of Dialogue
Another cultural factor to recognize is the importance of robust dialogue. You cannot have an execution culture without such a dialogue — one that brings reality to the surface through openness, candor, and informality. Your people must enter into such a dialogue with open minds, uncluttered by misconceptions or propaganda. Everyone must be open to speaking candidly, and to receiving the real opinions of others as well.

 By Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan