The Company Culture Dilemma
Why DO 96% of CEO’s believe their culture needs change, yet 45% say their culture is not being effectively managed?*
The top pressure for any organization today is to move faster in an era of less predictable outcomes.
Markets shift faster. Technology is obsolete sooner. Customers have higher expectations. Employees manage their careers, not driven by loyalty to an employer.
Change is the game. Speed is the advantage. Yet, most organizations have not evolved their management practices from the industrial age, to what works in a team-driven, complex, knowledge-sharing era.
As a result, most companies are plagued by change overload. Change fatigue. Change failure – in which people are losing faith that change can be a positive force for growth and makes their jobs easier.
Enter, company culture.
The new job description for leaders today is to balance two often competing forces: Ensuring their organization can adapt to change while providing the stability and consistency that drives efficiency and productivity.
Leaders must learn HOW to tap company culture as an enabler of speed, so this essential asset can become fuel for profitable growth in a change-driven era.
Why is culture work so essential, now?
There are 3 primary reasons to start treating culture as a profit center in your business:
- To adapt at today’s rapid pace, it is no longer possible for a few people at the top of the business to create and hold the vision, strategy, and future plans. You need a mass of clear and aligned people who are pulling together, who are educated and empowered, who are collaborating to spot and seize opportunities as they present themselves.
- Second, most companies operate with outdated management practices in teamwork, decision making, and strategy. The tools of yesterday will not navigate our whitewater, digital era. Out of date ways of working are literally a drag on people’s ability to do good work, and adapt to external forces more quickly.
- Third, culture is your internal brand, creating an identity and tribal pride for people who work for you. People want to belong. When they feel connected and proud to work for your company, the company’s success becomes an extension of their own. But today’s workforces need and want different things, than people cared about 10, 20 or 30 years ago:
It is high time to demystify culture!
In this 4-part blog series over the next several weeks …
I will teach you how you can assess your organization’s culture – and what are your strengths and weaknesses that drag – or drive – high performance.
I will focus on detailed answers to 4 questions related to culture assessment:
- Why perform culture assessment?
- When is it important?
- What are the key success factors?
- How should culture data be used to support successful cultural changes in the organization?
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