While I have no problems with the content of this article from Harvard Working Knowledge called 10 Reasons to Design a Better Corporate Culture, I do have an issue with the title.

Cultures aren’t designed. They aren’t like a car, or a shopping cart. You can’t just design and create it, and then built it to specification. Cultures grow and develop over time. They are living, growing, developing, and constantly changing.

The management of an organization should take proactive steps in nuturing the creation of a strong, supportive corporate culture. But, in the end, it is up to the overall constituency in the organization to accept and take hold of this culture. Management can spend their time creating public ceremonies, or workplace rules that foster creativity, but in the end, it is up to the workers of the organization as a whole to accept the culture as a shared experience.

Edgar Schein defines a corporate culture as

a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. (Organizational Culture and Leadership, p. 17)

A culture is learned. It isn’t designed by managers and leadership. It is created through a shared learning process by the organization as a whole as they work to solve problems. If you think that you can walk in and design a culture to fit your liking, then I would suggest you head back to the drawing board.