As stated earlier, when building a culture, you must change behaviours, symbols and systems in such a way that the existing messages about ‘what is expected around here' are altered forever. In this way a new value-set emerges, and you have built a new tribal norm.

Creating a culture that is a competitive advantage requires a shift in the hierarchy of values amongst a critical mass of people in positions of influence and power, underpinned by a simultaneous change in enough of the messages so that everyone in the organisation realises that things really have changed.

Once this occurs, the culture change process speeds up incredibly. For a while it feels as if you are pushing a huge rock up a steep slope. Suddenly, almost overnight, you reach the top and the rock starts to roll very fast indeed. Your leaders are making decisions that change symbols faster than you can keep up. The cultural change plan is overtaken by ideas you could never have dreamt of. This usually occurs some time in the second or third year of a focused process that has proper funding and priority. So hang in there.

The process of changing a culture involves changing the values and mind-sets of your people so that they themselves will change their behaviour towards others, their decision making and how they use their time. This means becoming a truly values-driven organisation that genuinely holds to its chosen values during times of pressure.

My father was a prisoner of war in the Second World War. He speaks very eloquently about watching the behaviours of his colleagues. Within days it became clear which fellow prisoners were ‘men of principle'. Some, he noted, gave up all principles in the desire for a cigarette. Others when they became hungry. Others, simply through the frustration, fear and boredom of camp life, began to steal, to betray and to put their own interests ahead of others.

An ‘organisation of principle' is a values-driven organisation. Even when times are tough, performance is poor and time is short, there are certain principles from which it will not waver. It is easy to uphold good principles when there is no pressure to do otherwise. This is why tough times bring out the true character in us.

Most values involve some element of upholding the wellbeing of others as well as our own. The role of values in society has been to ensure that, as a community, we live in a way that looks after the whole, not just the individual. A values-driven organisation has achieved this as a tribe. There may be some members who do not always behave appropriately, but the tribal norm is that its values will be upheld. Those who do not do so are not given many opportunities to repeat their behaviour, because it threatens the strength of the whole. The values are the glue that holds the tribe together.

A shared vision or purpose will also hold a tribe together, but in a different way. A vision provides a shared aspiration about what we, as individuals, are going to do, achieve or contribute towards the group's purpose. Values, by contrast, bind us together to act as a group, rather than as a set of individuals. The vision gives the sense of purpose, but the values provide the sense of identity. Together they are a formidable pair.

The culture that exists in your organisation today is the result of what has been valued over the past few years. If there has not been strong bonding through a shared set of uplifting values, then many individuals will have reverted to a selfish set of drivers: control, power, status, looking good and so on. So, the biggest step in your culture journey is to become a values-driven organisation. This means lifting yourselves as a group out of individual or organisational selfishness (the pragmatic approach that says ‘we don't really have principles; we will achieve our outcome at any cost at all').