The great thing about working on business fundamentals is that they will be equally as relevant in twenty years as they are today and were twenty years ago.

Perhaps the most important fundamental is culture, which is defined by the organization’s core values and purpose.  Strong leaders spend a great deal of time repeating the core values and purpose of their organizations and creating mechanisms that support the culture.  In The Winning Performance, Richard Cavanagh and Donald Clifford, Jr. provide a plethora of examples of businesses where the CEO and executive team spend a significant portion of their time communicating the fundamental values of the organization in an effort to protect the culture.  “Successful companies,” they write, “are run by people who have their priorities straight, their values clear, their direction tight, and a strong grasp of culture” (p. 17, emphasis added).

Don’t lose sight of culture.  The larger the organization, the greater amount of time the executive team should spend communicating and reinforcing the core ideology throughout the organization.