Is a quote often referenced in organisations through Executive staff and within the Boardroom. While its origins are often debated, this quote references the powerful and enduring impact that culture has on an organisation.
The success of strategic planning and implementation ultimately comes down to the people with the motivation, alignment and engagement to deliver. Strong cultures create this desire, building a strong ‘why’ within the strategy and with leaders who role model the values of the organisation.
Culture is critical to ensuring organisation’s recruit and most importantly retain the people that will enable their success. People tend to join organisations that they believe in, however they tend to leave based on cultures or leaders they feel don’t align.
Culture is present in an organisation whether you measure it or not. Culture is often described as “the way we do things around here”. It is the culmination of the organisation’s values, beliefs, expectations and practices.
There are 3 key steps to ensuring your culture is actively supporting your organisational goals, vision and strategy.
The first is to define the culture you want. This is an active process whereby the Board, Leaders and Staff articulate the behaviours that they want to reinforce. This is often linked to Values and Strategy regarding what your organisation needs currently and what it stands for. The process of defining culture creates an overt cue to all stakeholders about what the organisation wants the experience to be when interacting with the organisation, whether that be working with ‘with’ as a client ‘for’ us as a staff member.
The second step is to audit the existing culture reflecting on the ‘aspirational’ culture versus ‘current’ culture. This is a key step to ensure alignment between the experience that the organisation wants people to consistently have, and the reality. Within an organisation there are many factors at play which impact on culture, and it is important to consider these as a whole:
- The stories that are told within your organisation. This includes how we inform others of what is important, how we refer to the past, the ‘sacred cows’
- The symbols that are overtly shown within your organisation. This can be the colours you use to promote your business, the logo, as well as internally the ‘corner office’ or interaction points such as meeting spaces or break rooms
- The structures that guide governance. This can be the organisational structure, such as hierarchical or flat which can guide the balance of interactions amongst people
- The systems, processes and policies. These can be a strong cue for what an organisation values and the controls that are in place to guide working, for example, working from home, parental leave, retention, completion of timesheets
The third is to embed culture within practices, systems, processes and operating rhythms. This means referencing and reinforcing the desired culture in key people documents and processes (cultural artefacts), meeting rhythms, interactions, language and ensuring consistency and alignment through all levels of the organisation from Board to staff.
Culture is created by the ‘behaviours you walk past’.
Staff, within an organisation, look to others to learn ‘how to succeed’. This means learning from what is accepted, what is rewarded and what is reinforced. Organisation’s need to be clear on what it is that they want to project, what they want leaders to role model and what they want staff to do more of to align to their overall strategy, goals and alignment to values.
Why should Board’s be concerned about culture?
The right culture can be a major source of competitive advantage, both from a high-performance output basis, but also with regard to attracting and retaining people who are aligned to your purpose. Board’s should continually ask themselves whether the culture of the organisation is assisting its purpose, or if it is detracting. Like other measures, Boards need assurance that the culture of an organisation is supporting, enabling and enhancing their vision and strategy from their Board table, through the CEO, Executive, leaders and staff. Board’s are increasingly using tools to gain insights into their important role of cultural oversight such as culture and staff engagement surveys and exit interview data and holding CEO’s responsible for pro-actively driving a positive culture as the custodians of organisational reputation.
Final thoughts
Culture is often said to be intangible, however, to treat it as such is to undermine its importance to an organisation and the critical role that Boards, Leaders and Staff have in defining, developing and aligning this to create organisational success.
Please contact Susan Bates susan.bates@vuca.com.au if you would like to discuss this article further.
Susan Bates
Senior Associate/ Senior Organisational Psychologist, VUCA Trusted Advisors