If you want transformation, don’t forget the intangibles

Culture (per Merriam-Webster) is defined as the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization 
Culture is hard to characterize, hard to measure and hard to change. Therefore, it often gets ignored on the list of levers to pull when transforming a sales organization. Compensation plans, territory models, customer segmentation approaches, coverage models, and channel choices are all constantly debated and analyzed under a microscope. But culture is usually allowed to exist as is, regardless of whether it is helping to promote or to hinder the targeted sales strategies.
When thinking about the culture in your organization, consider what kinds of behavior are being rewarded: Who is being promoted, what words are used in corporate communications, what kinds of situations cause alarm bells to go off and what do leaders talk about?
In our recent World-Class Sales Practices Study, we used this last question as a way