Corporate Culture is one of the ingredients every corporation must have, says the book and sure enough our corporations are relentlessly working on it. But with all due respect, do the people in charge truly know the crucial importance of it? Do they know what this really means? Corporate Culture is a top priority in any corporation and should not be delegated!

Many corporations are spending a lot of money to come up with a statement about their Corporate Culture, which then of course is valid for and must be lived up by each and every employee! This approach contains already failure and here is why:

" Do you know whether your idea of your Corporate Culture is in alignment with your employees' feelings and beliefs?
" Did you talk to your employees about it and did you ask for their opinion?
" Does your corporation have a dream, a vision where everybody can buy in?
" Do you truly believe in your Corporate Culture or is it just PR for you?
" Does your Leadership Team believe it?

And those are only a few questions you should ask.

Many corporations not understanding Corporate Culture have literally a "Success-Cancellation-System" in place and they don't even realize it! If your Corporate Culture is in total misalignment with your employees your company is doomed to fail in the long run.

During my career I saw thousands of employed people living in fear of their bosses, trying to hide and do business as usual. In such a climate success cannot grow and tons of money are wasted and lost. Yet, and this is especially true for large organizations, all these little profit leaks are just overlooked, because nobody in Management pays attention! "I am too busy for it!" was the response I very often got when asking managers in charge.

How could this be changed for the better? I am sure that true leaders will certainly pursue every opportunity for growth and I am sure also that these leaders do have a dream! And this is how it starts, with a dream everybody in your corporation is inspired by!

Now if you are poised to change things around in your corporation for the better here is what you must do:

You start performing a "state-of-the-company" - review since you need a solid base to start from. Look especially for the personal values of your employees. What are they and why do they keep them high? What kind of culture would they like to have? If you ask them for their personal dreams they might not recall, but I assure you they have personal dreams deep down in their sub-consciousness, waiting to be released. They need to be invited to share their dreams and hopes!

Invite all of your employees to participate in this process showing them your appreciation and your trust in their abilities. Each of them has so much to contribute to the common goal, imagine where your corporation could be in ten years from now, when everybody shares the same values, shares the same culture and is living it every minute!

Even if you are still skeptic just keep on reading, because there is such a power in human beings. Do you understand that integrating them into this crucial process of defining a Corporate Culture will have the effect of providing them with Personal Growth? And do you understand the fact that all of us including you can only grow our success in the real world to the degree we grow personally?

Integration of all your employees in your Corporate Culture is so important that I cannot stress it enough. But you must also integrate the different aspects of human beings and their development. I am talking about body, mind and spirit and I am talking about an integral structure with Truthfulness (like Sincerity, Integrity, Trustworthiness...), Reality (like Facts, Structure, Correspondence...), Justness (like Cultural Fit, Mutual Understanding, Rightness...), and Functional Fit (like Systems, Processes, Social Mesh...) as its quadrants.

If you are willing and ready to shape the "Corporation of Tomorrow" taking advantage of the Human Dimension and its power right at your hands, you will soon reach the critical mass to grow your corporation beyond your current imagination!

I have to tell you however that you might need the help of somebody who fully understands the matter and you trust.

Walter H. Groth
Institute for Life and Career Transition