When most companies try to improve their culture, they focus on the negative aspects and try to improve them. Although this may sound reasonable, the opposite approach is more successful.

• Identify a few positive attributes within your culture that are connected directly to the identity and specific capabilities that are driving success in your business.
• Find ways to increase and extend them throughout the organization to counterbalance some of the negative aspects of your culture.
• Articulate the critical attributes of your business that people care about, and that can help move your strategy forward.
• In time, great behaviors and attributes will replace the negative aspects of your culture.

This approach has far more power than a “culture initiative” because it lets people bring their own emotional energy to a business where they feel they have a stake.

In most organizations, culture and strategy tend to be discussed in separate conversations.

Executives know that a negative culture can hurt company performance, but they may not know how to deal with it.