by Chris Cooper
Organizational Culture is a key component of performance. If you
want to transform your performance, you might need to transform
your culture. This article addresses some of the key questions you
should be asking if you want to do this effectively?
This includes the willingness of the most senior team and their
reports to accept that they may personally need to change their
behaviour. It is these people that through their behaviour can hold
the business back from thriving.
Also you need to be able to measure your culture and determine
where you need to go.
1. Is the business currently achieving the results that it
wants from its people?
If not, significant performance improvements can be made though
developing a culture that promotes the highest levels of
productivity and efficiency from people.
2. Do employee satisfaction surveys suggest people are
motivated and fulfilled?
If no, then you are operating inefficiently and unlikely to be
generating the performance returns on investment that are
possible.
3. Are senior management prepared to change their own
personal behaviour to achieve the desired results? Also to owning
any cultural change programme?
This can be one of the key stumbling blocks. Often it is the egos
of the senior team that get in the way of the business thriving.
Their behaviour actually blocks the road to success! This may be
particularly significant for young businesses, where there is the
greatest opportunity to set the cultural path.
4. Are people engaged behind a clear and inspiring strategic
vision, strategy, shared values and desired
behaviours?
Were the values of people in the organization taken into account
when determining vision, values and behaviour? If you want to
thrive you must understand the key words and intentions that will
help put your people into their high performance flow.
5. Are you prepared, to measure the current and desired
cultures to enable you to take the next steps
required?
This will of course mean investment. We are talking about
performance and the return on investment from cultural change can
be massive if you get it right.
6. Will you then be prepared to adjust employee
recruitment, training, appraisal and business processes to support
the desired behaviours and outcomes?
This will be necessary to deliver the results you want. You will
for example need to appraise people and potentially remunerate them
based on operating to the desired behavours.
7. Can you accept that this will take time? That you will need to
communicate effectively and take people step by step in an engaged
fashion through the process?
Often leadership teams want results now. Or sometimes it feels
like yesterday. With culture a longer term committed strategy is
required. However, over time the results can be significant.
If you need some advice regarding culture change in your
organization contact Chris@cc1consulting.com