The Success Culture, Part I: A critical need

“It is no use saying ‘We are doing our best.’  You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”

                                                                                                                                                - Winston Churchill

A Success Culture happens by design; not by default.  Success starts with a desire, as followed by an ongoing attitude - in supporting a will to succeed.  When the will is strong, in both the individual and the organization, then there is a belief in success – and success will be the outcome.  In building a culture of success, it is fundamental to build teams of people who know how to succeed, and thereby organizations that can succeed.

We’re not talking about success alone – for we can succeed in spite of costly mistakes; we can achieve an ultimate success after many preventable failures; we can often succeed where dumb luck plays as big a role as anything else.   We can succeed in spite of a poor culture; we can “beat the odds.”  But the odds catch up with us – and why take chances anyway?  Inefficient routes to success inflate poor morale, as well as exorbitant expenditures of time and money.

 The best blend of business and technology is dependent on success:  Your organization deserves a proper foundational culture and the right collective attitude to maintain and advance success against the challenges of a changing world.  So – we need to succeed on an intelligently designed basis – we must commit to succeeding on the most effective and continuous basis.  We will have a lock on success.  That lock will be for anything we do:  analysis, proper fits, implementations, progressions for the future, programming, reports, policies and plans, etc.  Name it:  Anything and everything.  And these must be delivered on-time, on-target, and on-budget.

Define.  Or Be Defined:  When we commit to success and a culture of success, that doesn’t mean we can’t have some failures, and that we can’t make allowance for mistakes.  We’re human.  There is always the unforeseen, and there are always mistakes to contend with.  What we mean here is that we don’t tolerate sloppiness, empty excuses, and ineptitude.  We tailor and maximize known practices, best practices, emerging and better practices, in managing business and its supports.  We pair these practices with the kinds of people who have the will to succeed:  that is, the strength of character (possession of ethics and sense of responsibility); the care for what’s required (knowledge, preparedness, teamwork); and the desire to put forth the effort in doing what’s to be done (a willingness to work, and to work according to specific standards regarding attendance, effort, ethics, and results).

Recognize this:  Unless we shape our environment, circumstances will shape it for us.  Unless we define our culture, it will be defined for us.  Unless we make it our goal to retain positive, qualified people, we will find ourselves wafting down to lesser qualified, and less positive people in terms of retention.  That will result in turn-over, constant training, errors, and bad business outcomes.  We must plan and carefully maintain the culture as we would anything else, in order to leverage it for better and best business outcomes.

Nothing manages itself and, like people, your culture deserves managing.  We must craft that culture with positivity.  The success culture-positive is an enormous lever in moving things to successful conclusions – its influence and power cannot be overstated.  Why would any organization not bias everything it could toward success?

Most importantly, when you set a bias for success, you have a primed system in place for taking on the emerging burdens, seen and unforeseen, in the environment.  Rather than blinking, stumbling, or choking in the face of some challenge, your organization’s wheels go into motion.  Whether faced with exciting new challenges, or discovery of bad, you have people, teams, and methods that are identified, in place, and possessed of knowledge and confidence in doing what needs to be done.  Further, what’s done is done prudently, efficiently, and with accuracy.

 Getting there always starts with attitude… Where is your organization’s attitude?