Creating a winning culture: next step for leading HR professionals

Purpose This paper aims to answer the why, what and how of culture as an emerging human resource agenda. Understanding culture is a trending topic for organization executives and thought leaders. Few deny the importance of culture for shaping and sustaining employee engagement and productivity, sustained strategy and business results. But while culture matters, it is often ambiguous and hard to define. Design/methodology/approach Based on our research on over 1,000 organizations, the authors have found that organization (culture) impacts business performance two to four times as much as individual talent. Findings The authors suggest that culture is not just a random set of values, beliefs or emotions, but a winning culture turns customer promises (firm brands) into internal organization actions. This paper proposes a disciplined process for creating a winning culture that engages employees in the right issues and invite human resource professionals to step up to this opportunity. Originality/value In this paper, the authors posit that the war for talent may be supplemented by understanding victory through organization culture.