We are living in extraordinary times – volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous.
The pace of change will never be this slow again.
In the service sector, many traditional approaches are no longer relevant and there is a new business agenda emerging.
Positively impacting society on a global scale through culture awareness, education and action.
We are living in an age of hyper change and massive disruption, what Daniel Pink calls “The Conceptual Age” stating that the future “belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind”: a new breed of knowledge workers, who know how to be, think and act differently within the context of an agile innovation culture.
When it comes to the complex topic of culture, all you can do is hope. In my experience with some of the largest companies in their respective industries, hope is the flawed strategy most commonly deployed.
Do you fully understand your culture and how it’s impacting performance? Are you managing a clear journey to effectively evolve your culture with a direct and sustainable impact on performance? There aren’t many leaders that can confidently answer “yes” to these two questions. We see culture tips and advice at every turn that range from superficial to endlessly complicated. If you are like me, it’s hard to understand what to believe.
It’s very important for leaders and change agents to learn from the culture pioneers and experts in this evolving field. Human Synergistics, therefore, convenes an annual Ultimate Culture Conference to bring visibility to important insights from culture trailblazers and progressive leaders.
Can we blame people for judging companies on their culture?
We all spend such a high proportion of our lives at the office nowadays — it’s unsurprising that we care about our working environment. Most conversations on culture inevitably end up on perks. Which companies provide free lunch? Which offer gym memberships? Which gives you the best ‘stuff’?
Many of us feel at times as if we are impersonating a leader rather than working out what it means to be ourselves in a position of leadership. Instead of covering up those underdeveloped areas, great leaders learn how to be the best versions of themselves in the leadership moments that matter. Because organizational culture is made through the shared experiences of its people, empowering individual leaders to step forward more authentically becomes a catalyst for positive culture change.
Focusing on a “critical few” behaviors is one of the fundamental tenets of working effectively with organizational culture. These are patterns of acting that are actionable, highly visible, and measurable. Most important, adopting these behaviors has a meaningful impact on an organization’s strategic and operational objectives. The behaviors are critical because they will have a significant impact on business performance when exhibited by large numbers of people; they are few because people can really only remember and change three to five key behaviors at one time.
What critical success factors do you monitor closely in your business?
Most leaders I speak with tell me they primarily watch performance metrics—widgets out the door, services sold, installations, market share, profitability, and the like. Customer service rankings come in a distant second.
Many factors contribute to unwanted turnover: A poor relationship between supervisor and employee; a toxic work culture; dissatisfaction with the job; and employee-peer drama.
All of these issues have one thing in common: Connection. Connection creates trustworthiness, loyalty, and a sense of ownership. Connection is a key building block to a great culture. Relationships crumble and relationships erode when there is a lack of connection.
In initial conversations with company executives, 92 times out of 100, they’ll call us and say something like, “We’ve heard you’re culture change experts and we need to change our culture. We’re thinking we want it to be more fun like that Tony what-his-name guy’s company—umm, Zappos. Can you do a “we ‘heart’ employees” (I say tongue-in-cheek) campaign or something to help us with that?”
It’s time to turn the culture world upside down and explode many incorrect notions that are preventing meaningful culture change for organizations and society. We’ve reached a critical point where most leaders are aware culture is important, but they range from being confused to intentionally uninformed about what culture change is all about. This culture awareness-education gap appears to be growing, with a proliferation of over-simplified or incorrect education, unreliable surveys and analytics, so-called experts at every turn, and leaders seduced by the latest trend or silver bullet.
What do you think about this statement?
Invoking a more strategic mode of behavior is a sure path to more social or material benefit.
When I ask this question, I usually see hesitance or reluctance. People really start pondering. Interestingly, asked in a workplace environment, the answer is eventually in support of the statement; though the magnitude of the expected benefit varies. Moreover, the answers correlate quite considerably with the hierarchy-level. Upper levels are clearly much more convinced of it than lower levels. And there is less support in private settings as well.
Culture is rapidly becoming a differentiator in business. We’ve historically thought of it as a means to attract talent. Increasingly it’s a way to attract customers too.
This opportunity to have Culture drive customer acquisition will bring into very sharp focus where – and who – in the C-suite should be held responsible and accountable for creating and nurturing culture.
Dr Mark Powell, one of the co-authors of this article, is an unusual beast: a dancing management consultant. Mark has worked at partner level at several consultancies, including Accenture, KPMG and A.T. Kearney. He is also a world championship-winning Latin ballroom dancer, winning the WDC Open World Over-35 Latin Championship for two years running while he was a partner at KPMG.
In the course of his dance career, which began when he was studying Economics at Cambridge University, Mark came to realise that the techniques and mindsets that he used as a dancer to develop winning performances were very different from those that he tended to deploy in the world of business, but that those techniques and mindsets were entirely applicable to the workplace, and were potentially transformative.
You can’t “do” culture change to your organization. Culture arises from the beliefs and underlying assumptions held by the people in the organization. Trying to change culture by decree or through training programs won’t affect people’s beliefs.