The four-phases of the Building a Culture of Distinction Program cycle

The Building a Culture of Distinction program is designed to define your organization’s core culture. Importantly, you will then align Practices and Projections with the core culture. To plan this system-wide organizational culture and change management program, you must understand the Building a Culture of Distinction program cycle. To clarify, there are four phases.

1. Conduct a Core Culture Assessment to define the Core Culture of your organization

Firstly, phase one is your organizational culture assessment. In this first phase, you will:

• Define your organization’s central principles—its Purpose and Philosophy. To clarify, these principles and values describe the organization’s contribution to society and distinctive character.
• Build on that identity-​​defining foundation by establishing the Priorities. That is to say, these are additional values that will enable your organization to compete and thrive.

2. Audit for alignment of Practices and Projections with the Core Culture

Secondly, phase two is the auditing for alignment phase. In this second phase, you will:

• Audit your Practices and Projections. Evaluate their alignment with the Core Culture–the Purpose, Philosophy and Priorities.
• Calculate your Alignment Index. In addition, identify recommendations to improve alignment.

3. Develop a plan to improve alignment

Phase three is developing a plan to improve alignment of the Five Ps. In this third phase, you will:

• Develop a Core Culture Alignment Plan to improve alignment of Practices and Projections with the Core Culture. Alignment is an organizational, team/department, and individual focus. To sum up, the aim is for employees to seek ways to more effectively Practice and Project the core culture principles.
• Set measures to monitor change in improving alignment. Similarly, measures can be on the organizational, team/department, and individual levels.

4. Implement the Alignment Plan and monitor success

Finally, phase four is the implementation phase. In this fourth phase, you will:

• Execute the plan to weave the Core Culture principles throughout the organization. In summary, the goal is for everyone to live by the core principles that will generate success. To clarify, this is an ongoing process.