Corporate culture refers to the character of a company's internal work climate and personality—as shaped by its core values, beliefs, business principles, traditions, ingrained behaviors, work practices, and styles of operating.

In a strong-culture company, culturally-approved behaviors and ways of doing things are nurtured while culturally disapproved behaviors and work practices get squashed.

In a strong-culture company, values and behavioral norms are like crabgrass: deeply rooted and hard to weed out.

In adaptive cultures, there is a spirit of doing what's necessary to ensure long-term organizational success provided the new behaviors and operating practices that management is calling for are seen as legitimate and consistent with the core values and business principles underpinning the culture.

Adaptive cultures are exceptionally well suited to companies with fast-changing strategies and market environments.

The tighter the culture–strategy fit, the more that the culture steers company personnel into displaying behaviors and adopting operating practices that promote good strategy execution.

It is in management's best interest to dedicate considerable effort to embedding a corporate culture that encourages behaviors and work practices conducive to good strategy execution—a tight strategy–culture fit automatically nurtures culturally approved behaviors and squashes culturally disapproved behaviors.

Once a culture is established, it is difficult to change.

A company's culture is grounded in and shaped by its core values and the bar it sets for ethical behavior.

A company's values statement and code of ethics communicate expectations of how employees should conduct themselves in the workplace.

A multinational company needs to build its corporate culture around values and operating practices that travel well across borders.

Management by walking around (MBWA) is one of the techniques that effective leaders use to stay informed about how well the strategy execution process is progressing.

CEOs who are committed to a core value of corporate social responsibility move beyond the rhetorical flourishes and enlist the full support of company personnel behind the execution of social responsibility initiatives.