Lou Gerstner said, “I came to see in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game — it is the game.”

Culture is a fancy way to describe how a group of people act. Every group, community, household, team, has a culture. Get people together and they will start acting a like. It’s how we are wired.

The hard part isn’t having a culture it’s creating one that aligns with what your trying to get done.

Organizations can’t succeed without the right culture. The right culture means everyone is acting right towards the goal.

Plans, strategies, processes, customer service, sales, all require us to act. How we act is the culture. Build the best plan, have the best product, recruit the best people, it won’t matter without the organization acting right towards the goals.

Lou was spot on. If you want a killer company, a killer sales force, a killer call center, start and end with the culture. It dictates how we behave and success comes from the sum of our behaviors.

The teams that acts right win. Period.