Lessons from the News Of The World Saga.......

The recent revelations about the behaviour of News International, The Met police et al reminded me of importance of creating and managing a corporate culture.

Culture is the way we do thing here. It is enshrined in the values, hopefully established by the top team, which then 'ensures' people behave in the way the organisation prefers.

Values are often thought to be the 'soft' part of business strategy, woolly and not important. So many organisations prefer to focus on profit, sales, EBITDA, cash etc. Actually, values are hard in two ways, hard to think through and hard to embed, but if you get them right; they create the profits the business desires. This is culture as an asset.

Typical business values are:

- Treat people with dignity and respect
- Honesty and integrity in all our dealings
- Delight our customers etc.

So what we see in the current debacle is a culture by default, one that was clearly either not designed or managed effectively.

Culture that does not serve the business is a liability which can drain the balance sheet and even kill a business.

So what are your business values and are they an asset or a liability?