Building a Winning Organizational Culture

“The business of business is people,today, tomorrow and forever “…Herb Kelleher Founder of South Western Airlines

The battlefield for profit is no longer in the market place, it begins in your business within your walls and that’s visible in the organizational culture.So, itis not product superiority, grand advertising campaign,astute social media strategy, it begins with your people inside your organization.

Leadership Frustration

As a Leader do you sometimes have a feeling of frustration as far as the commitment of your employees is concerned. Do you feel that your passion for what you do as a company does not necessarily find its place amongst your employees?

Is the current state of your company the ideal one, is it congruent to your dreams of an amazing company? Are you very anxious about what the future holds for your respective brands, do you feel that the competition is slowly but surely eating up your territory. Many companies struggle with creating and upholding a peak performance couture, it is a day to day process and that creates uncertainty for Leadership and shareholders.

In my work both locally and internationally, it sometimes feels like am going to the same company repeatedly the difference being the place and logo. I sometimes look at the faces of CEO’, HR Directors, Sales Directors and feel their pain each time they explain what they believe is not working in their respective organization. It is not a matter of me understanding them, I can feel them. Many have tried incentives etc. to inspire their people for peak performance and that does not have as long term effect. I have felt the pain they carry with them every day whilst much is expected from them.

If as a Leader this is how you feel and where you are, I can assure you I have sat in the most amazing boardrooms around the globe and felt this pain coming from sentences uttered by very committed men and women. These are men and women who do not go to work simply for money they want to be legacy builders, they want to be remembered for something amazing and yet feel that people do not get them and are not committed in the same way.

A healthy,powerful,exemplary, peak performing and inspirational organizational culture is driven by engagement and commitment of employees. If employees are engaged and committed building an organizational culture becomes aless painful process. Below I will share with your statistics on employee engagement.

Global Average: 30.0%

Europe 23.9%

North America 40.4%

South America 43.1%

Oceanic 28.0 %

Asia 23.4%

Africa 36.4%

3 Most Engaged and Committed Countries in Europe:

Austria 35.4%

Bulgaria 33.6%

Denmark 31.6%

European Average is 23.9%

If this is where the stats pointus, I guess you can almost identify this with what is happening in your company currently. I believe that each Leader has the potential to turn things around in their company no matter what the statistics say and where you are. There must be a willingness and belief that change can happen and that you can be able to not only inspire but build an Organizational Culture worth talking about which will also be able to catapult your organization to being the most loved organization by employees and respected by peers and competition alike.

Top 10 Global Culturally Aligned organizations were not created in Mars but here:

1.     Zappos

2.     Warby Parker

3.     South Western Airlines

4.     Twitter

5.     Chevron

6.     Square Space

7.     Google

8.     REI

9.     Facebook

10. Adobe

The above organizations are rated the best in the world as far as Organizational Culture is concerned however their Leaders will consistently tell you that they are a work in progress. The journey of building an organizational culture is organic. So, I believe that you can as a Leader be the person that facilitates this journey and bring your people with you all the way.

Having researched and worked with both local and international organizations in assisted them to building their culture I know that it is possible, it can be done the size and complexity of our organization does not matter it is always the will to make it happen which is the critical ingredient.

There are fundamental steps you need to follow in the building of your organizational culture.

1.     Global and Departmental Diagnosis:

You need to know where exactly your organization is as far as Organizational culture is concerned. There are online assessments which can be able to get you a proper outlook of where you are. Online is great, affordable and easy to administer however many people especially the rank and file are very suspicious of them. I usually advice my customers to employ a hybrid model, online for Managers and physical workshop engagement for the rank and file however both must be well communicated to remove any issues of trust.

2.     Results:

Once the results are out, use all kinds of communication methodologies to share them with the organization. Both online and engagement results must be communicated, in the communication process it is imperative to use Global and Local bench marks so that people can see exactly where the organization is.

3.     Process Design:

Once the results are understood and accepted by everyone, the design phase kicks

In. It is imperative to create a “task force “which is fully representative of the while    organization. The “Task Force “note I did not say “committee“, should then be the ones who will work with the service provider who have partnered with you to create the roadmap for the process of building the organizational culture.

4.     Implementation:

The combined delivery team will present the implementation plan to all the stakeholders and set out a clearly understood delivery matrix and time frame which will be integrated with your productive hours. Gone are the days when a project interferes with productive time, it must be integrated for minimum disruption but high impact in delivering the project.

5.   Monitoring and Evaluation:

We all know that you cannot be both the player and referee, there must be a performance matrix which is aligned to the organizational score card which will be used to monitor and evaluate the project as it is being rolled out. There must be a visible and validated ROI (Return on Investment) as the project unfolds,however expectations need to be clear and having been unpacked so that there is no mismatch to what was expected and being delivered.

6.     Kaizen:

As you monitor and evaluate the project, there will be lessons both from success and failure, the team must be able to learn as fast and be able to be agile in correcting processes which are not beneficial to the project and communicate quick wins and capture war stories which will be part of the case study going forward and for institutional memory.

As I have alluded earlier on, building a powerful,inspirational, practical and Values based Organizational culture is not an easy thing to do. I believe that the sincerity and commitment of the Leadership team goers a long way in getting the organization to not only buy in but also own the process going forward.

I believe that people want to work for an organization that not only prays at the altar of the Goddess of profit but which are caring organization that will create a lasting impact in society. this can and will be achieved by culturally aligned organization.

I hope and trust that you will not only start looking at how you also can build such a culture but that you will start having a profound conversation with the view of eventually engaging in such a journey with your organization.