Building astrong and diverse corporate culture is challenging, and everycompany's leadership team struggles with it. (Photo:Shutterstock)

Every business has a corporate culture, but it's only recentlythat companies have started to see just how important thischaracteristic is for building competitive advantage. Culture –including diversity and inclusion – is one of the most powerfuldifferentiators between strong and weak companies, withculture-conscious companies consistently outperforming theircompetitors. But while 94% of executives say a strong corporateculture is the key to business success, few actually know how toimplement the kind of cultural change that pays dividends.

Building a strong and diverse corporate culture is challenging,and every company's leadership team will struggle to build theculture they want. Seventy percent of change initiatives fail,largely because of poor employee buy-in and unevenimplementation.

Related: 3 ways to optimize the employee experience andcreate a better business brand

With record-high unemployment in the wake of the globalcoronavirus pandemic, it might seem counterintuitive for companiesto focus on boosting retention now when staving off unemployment ismore pressing. But large companies like Amazon and Facebook havetaken advantage of layoffs to recruit talent and are hiringaggressively during this pandemic, in some cases, poachingemployees at smaller companies who are looking for the stabilitythat comes with larger operations. Now is the time to thinklong-term. The U.S. economy will recover, and when it does,companies will want to have strategies in place that limitturnover, which is both costly and inefficient.

In my experience, the biggest stumbling block to successfulculture change initiatives is an overreliance on lip-service-stylecommunication from the top. Words alone don't effect change.Instead, to make the most credible, viable, and impactful culturechange, companies need to adopt an attention-grabbing "grandcultural gesture" as a calling card.

A cultural calling card is a demonstrable practical change thatcan serve as a beacon around which to orient larger and broadercultural changes. A calling card stimulates bottom-up, employee-ledcultural change by providing every employee with a shared culturaltouchpoint they can use to understand and implement a company'scultural vision. All of these calling cards have four things incommon: they need to be (1) clear, obvious, and enforceable; (2)shockingly counterintuitive so that they communicate a unique andprovocative change; (3) aligned with a company's values andmission; and (4) big enough or significant enough to require a realcommitment of time and resources, both from management and fromemployees.

These cultural calling cards define some of the most successfuland powerful companies today:

•  Zappos created the policy, since adopted by Amazon,of paying employees to quit.
• Bridgewater's founder Ray Dalio insists on firing employees for not criticizingtheir superiors.
• The Ritz-Carlton is famous for its $2,000 rule, a policy stipulating that any andevery employee is authorized to spend up to $2,000 to correct acustomer issue.
• Nike demonstrated its diversity culture when it supportedAmerican football quarterback and human rights campaigner ColinKaepernick in 2019, and when it required 10,000 managers worldwide to undergomandatory diversity training and unconscious bias awarenesstraining in 2018.

For each of these companies, their cultural calling card is morethan a flashy PR stunt; it's a clear statement about what valuestruly define the company culture and about how committed thecompany is to upholding those values in its daily operations.

For companies that can find their cultural calling card, therewards are enormous. Companies with a clear and engaging cultureenjoy superior employee retention and dramatically lower turnovercompared to their peers. The simple truth is that culture consciouscompanies compete better for top talent. According to theGlassdoor's Corporate Culture & Mission Survey, more than halfof respondents across four countries prioritized corporate cultureover salary when evaluating job satisfaction. And nearly eight in 10 adults consider a company's missionand purpose as crucial in their job application process. Andcustomers notice the cultural difference too. Nearly 63% of consumers globally want companies tostand for values other than profit.

But there's a huge disconnect between what employees andcustomers want and what many companies in fact provide. Just19% of employees globally see a strong matchbetween their employer's stated values and their day-to-dayworkplace culture. And companies like Volkswagen, Wells Fargo andEquifax have suffered massive financial losses simply becausecustomers have perceived them as hypocritical and dishonest.

The problem that companies face is that there's no gettingaround putting real skin in the game. It's never enough for acompany to release vision statements. Cultural values have to bewon, and companies have to put more on the line: If you aren'tmaking a move that raises eyebrows, you aren't showing that yourcultural values have real meaning. To make cultural change areality, you have to shift from verbal articulation of ideals topractical implementation of new organizational norms.

That means ditching the buzzwords and empty messaging, andinstead making a statement that means something. A cultural callingcard is that statement. While vision statements might define acultural commitment, a cultural calling card demonstrates culturalcommitment. And demonstrated cultural commitment is contagious.Adopting at least one counterintuitive, surprising, and impactfulpolicy shows to employees that the company is willing to put itsprinciples into practice. By doing so, companies can kickstartcultural change across all organizational levels.

Creating a thoughtful corporate culture is important forlong-term success. To get the best employee engagement and to winthe hearts of customers, companies need the credible culturalchange that comes from the powerful cultural commitment of acalling card.

Marvin Ammori is an executive at Protocol Labs, a companyfocused on improving the internet and computing generally throughdecentralized web protocols such as IPFS and Filecoin. He alsoserved as a technical consultant to HBO's "Silicon Valley." Hisviews are his own.

Read more: 

• Q&A: Adapting your company culture for theremote workforce
• Employees want a company culture that makes themfeel connected
• Job seekers want to know about company culturebefore they apply