Focusing on culture will lift organisational capability through your employees
As a business leader, you may not yet be convinced that culture is a key driver to achieve sustainable growth. It is and it demands your attention and commitment if sustainable success is on your agenda.
Culture may feel fluffy and intangible, compared to typical measures of organisational performance like EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortisation), gross margin, new business sales… What we do know is that organisations with a strong cultural foundation create value and are well positioned to weather the storms of uncertain times. And make no mistake, there’s still more than a degree of uncertainty here in 2021.
In Part 1 and 2 of this series, we focused on the leader’s critical role in creating and shifting cultural drivers through candid self-assessment. Obviously, it is not just a matter for leaders though. In this final piece, we will take a look at the impact culture has on employee engagement and performance.
Culture will drive value for your business or drive your business… into the ground
Organisational culture is an under-researched value driver amongst important contributors to organisational performance. Culture influences fundamental decisions in an organisation, and impacts your reputation, financial performance, analyst stock recommendations, employee engagement and retention. Effective culture creates the best conditions for you to successfully execute on the company strategies and achieve its goals. Ineffective or poor culture builds a maze of roadblocks and seeps into every aspect of your operations – in a viral fashion.
3 ways culture enables people to achieve great outcomes in your business
There are of course many ways that culture will underpin what people achieve in your business and they include:
- Collaboration – a strong culture, with a clear and compelling vision, shared regularly through stories, creates a certain type of pride that unites people – we are all ready to give it our best shot. A natural outcome of this is that people are more likely to reach out to others across the organisation to get things done because it makes sense. There are fewer artificial barriers to achievement. They will do this because it matters – they share what matters. This shared understanding drives “connected work”, creates energy and possibility while developing capability.
- Realistic and aligned expectations – because the culture and what is really valued are not only clearly felt in the brand but also embedded into every stage of the employee lifecycle, expectations are formed somewhat automatically, guided by experience. The expectations are more likely to reflect the organisation’s way of working because they are based on consistent experience in day to day interactions. As employees experience leaders and colleagues that are open, proud, energised and excited about possibility, there is a roll-on effect that motivates others to invest effort.
- Empowerment to act – because the organisation has created clear principles which guide behaviours, even when new situations arise, people feel equipped to respond effectively and take action. Teams and individuals are encouraged to think as well as do. People have energy and make the space to prioritise, pause, think using the whole of the brain and create solutions.
The converse of this, a result of not investing in culture, is what we are seeing in a number of workplaces today. Employees are on a treadmill of exhaustion and overwhelm from crushing workloads and a general sense of reactive chaos. In such scenarios, what really matters is lost to a focus on survival of the fittest.
Where would you prefer to be?? If you would like to shed some light on how your organisation’s culture is supporting or detracting from your ability to realise your 2021 strategy, please give me a call on 0423 163 319.
