Employee commitment – related to high levels of engagement, for everyone, not just managers and supervisors. Individual, “front-line” employees are motivated, even inspired, to work for the company and its goals.

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Fully empowered employees – Authority for action has been sufficiently delegated so individual employees have enough authority to act on their own, without having to seek “supervisor approval” for a long list of activities that are an integral part of their normal work flow or job responsibilities. Another word for this is “autonomy” – independently responsible.

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High integrity workplace – The actions of leaders and people at all levels is such that everyone’s “word is their bond.” It is expected that promises made, will be kept. This enables all participants to avoid time-wasting, discouraging “CYA” actions, reports, memos, and approvals. If a leader, especially, has to “go back on his word” he/she understands that this will be regarded as a serious breach of trust by others, and so will go to great lengths to “make it right” with everyone.

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Strong trust relationships – Closely related to high integrity is strong trust relationships, up/down the structure of the organization and laterally. People at the same level in this context, view their co-workers as team-mates, whom they can count on to do their part, be straight shooters, honest, and to not leave their co-workers “hanging out to dry.”

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Highly effective leadership – Key part of the overall culture; repeated here to emphasize that this means leadership at all levels not just the C-level managers, but first line supervisors, mid-level managers, lead people, people in a supportive role such as Quality Assurance people with a “dotted-line” reporting relationship to others.

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Effective systems and processes – any problems with basic daily work flows are worked out, resolved, so that everyone may focus on getting the work done without a myriad of error-producing exception conditions, inaccurate/untimely information, and other factors that clog the work flows. This means a certain, basic level of effectiveness has been established, and is re-established quickly after any reorganizations or realignment of responsibilities, such as might occur with implementing a new enterprise software system. It is distinct from the continuous improvement process in that it assumes at least a certain, minimum standard of effectiveness has been establish for all processes, including minor ones.

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Performance-based compensation and reward programs – bonuses, profit-sharing, stock options, and the like, all keyed to revenue and profitability and/or other goals are in place, so that everyone who helps accomplish these goals has the opportunity to benefit personally from their achievement. Ideally, the reward/compensation system is designed to be responsive to work groups or units that an individual person can relate to, not just the company as a whole.

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Customer-focused – everyone understands, and “gets” that the company, its performance, products, services are entirely driven by customer needs, desires, and that the purpose is to create “delighted” customers, beyond just “satisfaction” in a minimal sense. This is a feeling, pervasive in the way people act, both internally, between each other, and externally, to customers and suppliers.

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Effective 360-degree communications – the review process includes one’s subordinates and peers, as well as just “keeping the boss happy.” In many job situations, it may be appropriate to seek in put from those outside the company, such as customers or key suppliers with whom the person regularly interfaces. The benefit of this is not only expanded understanding of how a person is functioning so managers can make better assessments, but for the person’s benefit as well, to support and drive personal and professional improvements as well.

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Commitment to learning and skill development – This characteristic is integral to one of the Four Essential Factors – an ongoing, effective education and training program for everyone. For a fully effective Best Practice culture, it is vital that those doing the jobs, and the improvement process, themselves continue to improve over time – to “improve the improvers,” so to speak.

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Emphasis on recruiting and retaining outstanding employees – realizing that highly effective people are critical, Best Practice cultures pay close attention to who is doing which jobs, so that each job can be performed as well as possible. The key to this is careful, effective recruiting, and then working hard to retain the best people possible. Significant turnover is a sure sign of culture difficulties.

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High degree of adaptability – Like the US Marine slogan, “improvise, adapt” – the effective Best Practice culture participants do not cling to established work structures, job assignments, etc., but embraces the truth that change is desirable and required for the kind of success everyone is seeking. So, it is expected that learning new skills, technologies, ways of interacting and working together are all part of this steady march forward to success in today’s arenas, and tomorrows which may not have even been innovated yet.

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High accountability standards – key to integrity and trust is the notion that people are responsible for delivering on what they commit to doing. The organization’s work flow, and social process depends upon this high standard of personal, work team, organization, and business unit accountability. If extraordinary efforts are required, it is assumed that these will be taken if necessary. It is a ‘no-excuses” environment.

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Demonstrated support for innovation – An essential aspect of a Best Practice culture is a pervasive thought-process of always developing, trying out, experimenting with new, potentially better ways of doing things, for both products and services, as well as “purely internal” functions as well. So, in addition to obvious things such as new, exciting products, a Best Practice culture will experiment with internal functions such as self-service employee benefits intranet web sites.