As a young sales manager, whenever I would attend training and hear a speaker begin talking about culture, I'd get turned off. I wasn't there to hear about a bunch of warm and fuzzy culture nonsense; I wanted to learn how to get the hard numbers. As the years passed and I wised up, I learned that you couldn't get hard, sustainable numbers without a supporting, “warm and fuzzy culture.” The quality of one's cultural foundation makes the attainment of an organization's ultimate few objectives (TUFs) either feasible or impossible.

In this part I'm going to try to make the process of building a high-performance culture of execution (a culture where the right things are consistently done) very practical for you. I will outline five cultural pillars that comprise your organization's foundation and offer strategies for improving each one. Likewise, I will create a clear portrait of what the optimal culture looks like and offer specific concepts that must be woven into the foundation. In addition, I will present potential cultural infections and threats to your organization's foundation, as well as the strategies for preventing or removing them.

As the chapters progress you should clearly see how vital the right culture is in sustaining a process like master the art of execution (MAX) and how without it, MAX would never be fully leveraged, most likely fizzle into the fray, and become the latest failed flavor of the month.

Getting the culture right is a leader's responsibility, and as your own skills improve you will find that success in the cultural arena comes easier and faster. Getting the culture right also sets up the book's fourth strategy, “Get the Team Right!,” because without question, a great culture is essential to attracting, developing, and retaining high-quality human capital.

Because culture requires constant attention and is never finished, it is best that we get to work! Although I believe you will find the strategies for getting the culture right simple—after all, it's not rocket science—that doesn't mean they will be easy. So, roll up your sleeves, and let's go tend to the essential, always-in-progress business of getting the culture right.