75% of initiatives to grow or improve any business (merger, strategy, team, culture) fail to achieve the expected ROI.
—Mourier & Smith, 2001
Culture change today is about aligning people across the business adapt, innovate, and drive change. The following research – all highly credible sources – will help executives understand the crucial link between culture and business performance:
Culture-Performance Research Summary
John Kotter and James Heskett
Comprehensive research detailed in Corporate Culture and Performance, 1992:
- Compared adaptive and non-adaptive cultures;
- Adaptive outperformed non-adaptive competition by 756% net income growth vs. 1%;
- Similar contrast shown in several other key performance measures.
Dan Denison, University of Michigan
- Multiple studies of direct research on culture-performance link, by Dan Denison;
- Denison Organizational Culture Assessment inks culture to 7 business performance measures;
- Benchmarks a company against 1076 companies globally;
- Average ROE for high culture scores was 21% versus low culture scores 6%.
Jim Collins and Jerry Porras
- Reported in the classic book Built to Last, 1994
- Comparative study of visionary companies with “second-best” competitors and general market companies;
- Visionary companies outperformed the general market by a ratio of 15 to 1 in stock returns (from 1926 to 1990).
McKinsey Study – Workplace of the Future
- A 2017 study reveals: Two-thirds of C-suite executives believe 40% of Fortune 500 companies will no longer exist in 10 years (due to digital disruption.)
- “Workplace of the future” is not abstract. McKinsey cites it as CEO’s #1 concern from their 2017 study.
- Do you accept the challenge? Is your organizational culture poised to rise to fiercer competitive forces? To create new rules for the future of work? Do you know WHAT must change in your organizational culture, to accomplish this?