ABSTRACT
Corporate culture-the beliefs, behaviors, and assumptions shared by individuals within an organization-includes such things as procedures, values, and unspoken norms. Culture can have a significant influence on how well strategy is executed in organizations. The importance of achieving strategic objectives, how performance is communicated, whether or not changes create competition or cooperation, who can access and use technology, whether or not decision making is done in command-and-control environments or by selfdirected teams, how functional units work with each other-these are just a few of the issues of culture that need to be addressed in creating a structured approach to executing strategy via a Strategic PMO. Some best practices, identified in our Strategy & Projects research study, include:
Project management is valued throughout the organization.• Risk planning is an important part of the organization’s • culture. A focus on strategy execution is an important part of the • organization’s culture. Senior management is trusted, and consistently rewards suc-• cessful project behaviors. There is a shared understanding and commitment concern-• ing the organization’s long-term objectives and its strategy for achieving them. The most often used practice by high-performing organiza-• tions is having leadership that is trusted. High-performing organizations are significantly better than average at having senior management that consistently rewards successful project behaviors.1
