Creating a high-performance culture

Today’s organizations face many challenges when it comes to building their culture whether they are aiming to create a culture that is more inclusive, more innovative, more adaptable, more compliant or more digitally savvy. Culture is key to unlocking an organization’s greatest potential, yet senior leaders often struggle to identify and leverage the functional aspects of their organization’s culture so its power can enhance their brand, improve business results and fulfill their organization’s purpose.

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Last week I came across a report on “Building a culture that drives performance” by Gallup which says that successful organizations make a compelling brand promise to their customers a commitment to quality, a standard of service, etc. that differentiates them from the competition. Without a compelling brand promise that motivates customers, culture also seems undefined and feels uninspiring, making it unlikely that it will significantly affect business performance. The world’s most successful enterprises clearly define, consistently execute and effectively align their culture throughout their organization, inspiring high commitment from employees. This approach to culture attracts talented employees and inspires them to consistently deliver on the organization’s brand promise to its customers.

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• Cultures focuses engaged employees: Employee engagement centers on meeting essential employee needs. It helps leaders and managers focus on the actions that matter most to their team members and aims to create employees and teams that are poised for high performance. In this way, achieving high employee engagement is an important method for driving a high-performing culture and accomplishing the goals of the organization.
• Culture creates alignment: Organizations gain momentum when their employees are aligned moving in the same direction toward the same goal. This momentum allows them to deliver a seamless, differentiated customer experience while creating a compelling employee experience. Alignment means that everyone from current and prospective employees thinks and talks about the company in the same way. It also allows the culture to provide direction for leaders, managers and individual contributors, clarifying how to prioritize their time, energy and resources.
• Culture affects performance: Leaders need to be intentional about the culture they want to create for their business. They need to be able to relate corporate goals to allow each employee to identify with and internalize those goals; they also need to be a role model for those goals. This can be done by reinforcing organizational values and ensuring organizational ethics are defined, understood, and practiced.?Leaders should promote diverse thinking. They need to share knowledge to create a sense of collaboration within the organization. Doing so pushes forward a positive culture, allowing employees to work more efficiently, creatively solve problems, and be more productive.

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To conclude, many organizations identify “customer centricity” as part of their goals. But the ways they can achieve customer centricity vary tremendously by industry, market segment, product or service offering, and other variables. So, on a journey toward customer centricity, limiting measurement to standard items promotes only the most generic changes. It provides no gauge of progress toward a differentiated and valuable customer proposition.