Six ideas for building a high-performance culture
If there’s one topic that sparks interesting discussion, it’s the role of organisational culture and its impact on achieving high performance.
One organisation that understands this well is Microsoft. As published in Bloomberg , Microsoft became the world’s most valuable company. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO, market cap has grown from $300 billion to $2.9 trillion - that’s almost 10x in 10 years.
Why is this relevant to financial services? Well, despite the now untenable ‘move fast and break things’ approach, technology shares key parallels with the financial sector: complex, competitive, and ever-increasing regulation. The catastrophic consequence of a major player failing, now the same. And yet, organisations like Microsoft proves it is still possible to be highly innovative in these conditions. What can we learn?
For an answer, cast your mind back 10 years to when Satya Nadella took over as Microsoft CEO and famously challenged the entire organisation to go from ‘know it all’ to ‘learn it all’ . Simple, but remains one of the singular most important case studies of the disproportionate impact leaders can have on making the changes necessary to shift culture, execute strategy and deliver results.
Of course, the discussion on how leaders influence a high-performance culture is not new. Financial service executives often face this at key inflection points; be it at the start of a new strategy, when the metabolic speed of execution is low, or when at the extreme, its change or fail. These are critical moments when business performance can deviate from organisational values, meaning a strong organisational culture is key to maintaining performance amid market change or pressure. Here are six ideas for doing just that:
Emotions first
Recent neuroscience studies suggest that we “feel” before we “think”, placing emotions at the beginning of behavioural change. When communicating the need for change, leaders can build on this by sharing a strategic narrative that simultaneously evokes dissatisfaction with current performance and excitement for future prospects. In a series of recent EY client leadership workshops, triumphs and failures were presented in a highly visceral way, provoking an emotional response as a first step towards positive, collective action.
Align purpose to performance
Investors, customers and employees expect companies to seek a purpose beyond mere profit, re-defining the meaning of “performance” – what Satya Nadella called in an HBR interview "rediscovering Microsoft's soul”. Organisations that get in touch with their own, unique, corporate “souls” provide a foundation for financial services leaders to bring meaning and authenticity to the employee experience, aligning purpose to performance expectations, so that workers understand how their roles contribute to an expanded concept of “value”.
Reimagine what “high performance” now means, and commit to it
It's vital to nurture fresh mindsets and capabilities that elevate purposeful performance standards. The complex environment of financial services means doing this at pace and scale can be a major hurdle. Instead, leaders should focus on a few observable behaviours for rapid, disruptive change, or invest in talent and capabilities for long-term goals. By embracing these new standards and demonstrating visible commitment in the face of hard-to-shift legacy mindsets, leaders can play a pivotal role in showing others ‘a better way’. Balancing this with empathy is key; even with a renewed results-focus, recognising incremental improvements and valuing employees’ efforts stimulates the confidence to keep going.
Operate with a growth mindset – don’t just philosophise
Employees want to think, discover, and grow, and tapping into key skills and interests is a future-of-work imperative for driving performance. This fundamental belief that ‘everyone can be developed to be more’ can be reinforced by leaders who operate with a growth mindset and take a holistic view of individuals capabilities. To amplify this, leaders should focus on creating opportunities for job rotations, special projects and events that provide crucible learning moments for their people – both professionally and personally. This is much more potent than ‘on the job learning’; opportunities like this allow capability and opportunity to converge, maximising developmental impact.
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Act as enablers and architects of change
High performance is dependent upon a steady stream of innovation, and innovation often prospers in environments that encourage collaboration, experimentation, and new ways of thinking. This requires financial services leaders to balance traditional leadership styles with empowerment. To help drive this, EY Humans@Centre research indicates that leaders should set boundaries, and then step back – empowering people to experiment and focus on delivering new insights. Creating safe places for people to do this allows stakeholders to explore the art of the possible, without overstepping risk boundaries.
Hardwire performance
Achieving high performance is hard, but sustaining it is even harder. To prevent momentum from stalling, leaders should hardwire performance into systems, policies, and processes, whilst visibly recognising, rewarding, and holding people accountable. In her book, Radical Candour leadership coach Kim Scott suggests that feedback – even when it’s not always positive – combined with the cornerstone of “caring personally whilst challenging directly”, helps to foster open, but respectful dialogue that drives continued performance.
The road to driving a culture of high performance often requires patience to balance the rational needs with emotional needs. However, leadership remains one of the key drivers to steering teams towards greater innovation, a deeper sense of organisational purpose, and ultimately achieving new standards of performance.
Interested in developing your leaders to drive high-performance culture? Get in touch with one of our EY professionals.
Disclaimer: The views reflected in this article are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organisation or its member firms.
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Vice President, Microsoft Communications Strategy
8 个月love this Richard Parker and Annabel Catchpole MBA. It was a pleasure to share some of the Microsoft journey with EY clients recently and I hope we can do it again soon. The last ten years at Microsoft and having a small hand in the cultural transformation was and still is a career highlight. It's incredible to see the impact it can have in so many ways when an organization truly focuses on culture.
Senior Consultant, Learning and Development at EY
8 个月A fascinating read Annabel and Rich! The insightful analysis of Microsoft's organisational culture and it's shift from a "know-it-all" to "learn-it-all" approach stood out in particular for me. Much for ourselves and organisations to learn from and action!
Managing Director at Sport Industry Group
8 个月Great read RIch. Love the Radical Candor book. Whilst at Spotify, the entire management team was told/encouraged to read it, then we had a training day around the principles - and those principles are still front of mind for me today over 5 years on