Walking the Talk

This will be the final blog that I post for 2009.  I write it from Australia, the country where I spent 20 years of my career, and the home place of many of the people I consider part of my core tribe.  I have a special love for this vast country.

Many companies in Australia have dedicated a lot of effort to changing their culture over many years.  Some of the most pioneering work on culture and personal development has occurred here. Symbolically, when I typed in ‘culture’ in the People section of LinkedIn, I found that many of the HR people who have ‘Culture’ in their job title are based in Australia. It has been a privilege for me to be a part of this community and to contribute to building the frameworks for leaders to manage this process. A big pat on the back to Human Synergistics Australia who have done a fantastic job of lifting the profile of culture in the business community – 4000 people attended their Leadership & Culture conferences this year. (If you are familiar with the HS tools, you will smile at their Xmas card).

 In Australia and across the world the gap that I find is the knowledge of how to systematically go about changing a culture, or building one from stratch.  Culure development plans often lack the rigor common in other business plans, language can be fuzzy, business benefits not tightly defined.

In early 2010 I will be launching my new business ventures, which will be dedicated to providing tools for HR people, leaders and consultants to build the cultures they need.  I want to make the Walking the Talk methodologies the standard for managing culture, and easily available across the world. Culture can be planned, implemented and measured.  It is not magic. It requires leaders who will walk their own talk, and who are supported by others who can help them execute a process which is scalable, sustainable and transferable.

Thank you for supporting me this year through reading this blog, through your comments and emails of encouragement and insight.  I have more to offer next year, so stay tuned.

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