Every organization, church, geographic region, and family has one…a culture.  The cultures we are in surround us, envelop us, and develop us.  When we walk into a distinct culture we feel it, yet unwittingly become transformed by it. Whenever I go to Texas, within about 5 minutes of getting off the plane I start saying things like “fixin-to” and y’all.  I can’t help myself, it’s the culture!

Cultures are powerful communicators of our beliefs and our way of seeing reality.  They tell us how to behave and for the most part we fall in line.

Ironically, we treat culture building as happenstance.  We let culture develop rather than develop culture.

As leaders one of our great stewardship’s is intentional culture building.  We are intentional about what principles and values we feed our culture.  We model behavior. We craft habitual actions which reinforce the reality we want to create.  We design a powerful identity to which our people want to be connected.  And we work at it until the reality matches the picture we’ve drawn.

The leadership challenge is to be deliberate about building a culture that will serve the people who will be attracted to that culture; from the team member who is unseen to the guest that walks in your doors.

Leader hear me: culture building is your calling. Be intentional.

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