You are an ambitious business owner, CEO, MD, or senior executive . You know that when your People feel supported and that they belong, your organisation can reap significant benefits, including:
- From their increased capacity to thrive and excel with a stronger drive to effect continuous improvements across all aspects of their roles
- Higher quality daily contributions to your organisation’s ambitions
- Improved processes and offerings
- Stronger relationships internally, and across your entire value chain, especially with your clients
- Higher staff retention rates and an easier capacity to hire new Talent
- An improved reputation in society
- A stronger bottom line !
These are the beneficial outcomes arising from a positive corporate culture, one which focuses on continuous improvements - you can review this concept in more detail in the Business & Board Advisory section.
The flip side is an unhealthy corporate culture, which can lead to underperformance, or potentially far worse. This is where we can help you.
We understand which factors drive positive cultures in organisations, and importantly, how to remediate challenges when they occur, and we share some of our insights below.
Corporate culture can be described as the common set of behaviours, underlying mindsets, beliefs and other interactions which shape how your People work and interact with others throughout your organisation, day to day.
Your culture affects not only your own People, but also your customers, suppliers, wider value chain, and the community at large. So it matters. It correlates with your performance. A report by McKinsey & Co, 2018, using their measure of Organisation Health highlighted top quartile cultures outperform median cultures and bottom quartile cultures by 60% and 200%, respectively.
Positive culture is inherently difficult to replicate. Building and sustaining a culture that adapts over time is critical to your survival. It is a powerful source of differentiation in periods of extensive change.
Our research highlights positive corporate culture stems from the successful alignment, integration, implementation and continuous refinement of just five primary pillars, specifically:
- Your organisation’s values & behaviours
- The policies you put in place to encourage them
- The actions you take to embed them
- The involvement and commitment of all your staff, from the CEO down
- And the monitoring of your efforts to maintain them
In most organisations these are reflected in:
- Your stated purpose & values
- Your organisation’s governance, and the relationships between the constituent parts of your business
- The policies and processes you implement to support Diversity, Equality, Inclusion (& Belonging)
- Your People’s well-being & resilience
- The systems you design for objective setting, review and appraisal, and rewards
- Staff attitudes and behaviours
- How you collect and use feedback from all your stakeholders, including employees and the wider community
But here’s the rub.
Too often, we see serious gaps and weaknesses in one of more of these areas, undermining their effectiveness, leading to unhealthy cultures, ultimately damaging your financial performance.
To mitigate these risks and secure the positive cultural benefits your stakeholders expect, you can apply our solutions for Culture-Mapping. These identify where in your organisation unhealthy culture exists. They highlight the underlying issues and causes, opening up practical routes to address them. In turn, helping you realign your efforts to secure the organisational dynamics and culture you covet, and positively harnessing the diversity, creativity and energy of your People.
Because these solutions are collaborative and non-intrusive, they reinforce the very approach you want to foster, one of continuous improvement.
Why not contact us to see how they might work for you.