How do you align culture change with strategy and vision?

Aligning culture change with strategy and vision is crucial for organizations. It creates a cohesive framework that guides employees toward shared goals, bridges the gap between the current and desired states, and addresses cultural barriers. By aligning culture with strategy and vision, employees understand their contributions to organizational objectives, enhancing engagement and commitment. It involves targeted interventions, fostering desired behaviors and values. This alignment drives success and creates a sense of purpose for employees.

culture change efforts require tight alignment to company strategy and vision to drive adoption and impact > articulate how the desired cultural traits will accelerate achieving strategic goals; connecting dots to the bigger picture > culture objectives into core statements like mission, values and leadership principles that provide guiding rails > senior leaders model behaviours inherent in the culture you aim to foster as alignment of words and actions is crucial > review and adjust organizational systems like performance management and rewards to reinforce new cultural norms > tangible metrics related to employee initiatives tied directly to strategic goals, culture shifts from seeming like a detour into a vehicle for transformation.

As a long term change practitioner that has driven culture change, I would agree with deploying many of the tactics cited here. However, you will note that the most important component affecting SUSTAINABLE change is the successful engagement, orientation and active participation of leadership. My standing question to them is always "What do you want to do REALLY?" If they truly want sustainable culture change, leadership has to 1) be an active part of developing the culture change (i.e., what does the new culture look like and why?, 2) be active in the deployment (communicate and be visible) and 3) be an active example as a leader. Live and lead the new culture every day, and 4) there are consequences for not being part of the new vision.

In addition to the the note and comments from fellow contributors, I would add: 1. Design the culture change objectives with elements that the leadership is really willing to back. 2. Keep the focus on a few, critical elements only that are easy to communicate, grasp and design plans around. 3. All leadership decisions, and not just communication, should be consistent with the planned culture change objectives. 4. In a big company, and when pushing big change, find a “crucible” for trying out key elements of the change - a geography, a function - and work it hard there, showcase what was done there to rest of the organisation, including key learning. 5. Bottom line is consistency, transparency and making it believable for all.

I don't at all agree with the main premise. Strategy and vision should be aligned to the culture --- not the other way around. Culture change is very difficult. Better to really understand it and adapt the strategy to relevant parts of the culture.

A lot of this resonates with my experience of leading culture change. I'd suggest two builds: 1) An organisation's culture should be the 'how' underpinning its organisational strategy (the 'what'), which in turn should deliver on its purpose (its 'why'). E.g. if your strategy is about growth, you need a culture that fosters the right mindsets and behaviours for this. 2) To deliver a culture change, you need a separate culture vision and strategic plan that describe the desired culture you're working towards and what you'll be doing to get there. Culture change is about hearts, minds as much as it is about systems and processes (if not more!), and you rarely get to the culture you want by accident - it needs rigour, measurement and focus.

Who defines the culture of the company? How do we define culture? Like anything else, it means something or nothing based on the audience. It's been my experience that vision changes, but cultures should be stable if... big if... it is defined to collaborate with its workers on a regular basis. If it does this, then culture will be organically changed as conversations around improvement never cease.

Having worked with many companies in a growth spurt, here are my observations: A company has culture and values that it recognizes. Meanwhile, they hire many new people to support their growth. In fact, it is common to hire chunks of people from just a handful of other, larger companies as people tend to share job descriptions with other people they have worked with. Having an influx of people who were just working in a different environment, they bring it with them. The culture suddenly starts to shift. While I hear people complain about this there is nothing unexpected about it. Manage it or don't manage it, but this influx causes its own challenges.