SPECIAL EDITION: Book release ??

This is an exciting edition for me, where I am able to announce the release of my new book: Aligning Culture & Strategy.

In many years of running strategy sessions, team workshops, and leadership masterclasses, I have constantly found the discussions around culture and performance to be underwhelming.

Some believe culture is king and we should focus on nothing else. Others think it is a HR buzz word that gets in the way of real work. Both of these views hold some truth but are unhelpful.

Getting alignment between your culture and strategy is vital and in this book I unpack the steps you need to take to ensure you have the guiding principles to support a high-performance organisation. Check out a short exert below:

Why we need to align Culture & Strategy

No doubt, if you have flicked through popular business books or LinkedIn posts, you have come across this quote from legendary management consultant, Peter Drucker:?

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast."

This plea for organisations to take culture seriously has encouraged many frustrated people leaders and HR teams around the world to demand more attention, budget, and leadership commitment in order to build a positive work culture.

However, building culture is hard and often simply ends up with brand new inspirational posters on walls, token gestures in tea rooms and some new furniture. Sadly, the excitement of mountaintop photos with someone with arms akimbo looking towards an amazing sunrise, bean bags and ping pong tables is short-lived. All too often, vibrant hopes of lasting change are dashed by embedded sets of rigid policies, persistent KPIs and powerful hierarchical structures that have long reigned supreme in many organisations, old and not so old.

Despite the culture-focused efforts of passionate followers of Drucker, the relentless drumbeat of systems, processes and procedures wear down the teeth of this new culture as it tries to consume the strategy - Mr. Drucker's cultural movement can swiftly become the victim. People who are accustomed to ‘the way we’ve always done things around here’ may quickly dismiss the new culture drive as nothing more than another HR fad, a waste of money, and a distraction from “real work”. People soon forget the posters and call people playing ping pong lazy – worse still, they actively sabotage such efforts in the knowledge that if they just hang in there long enough, and don’t engage at all or undermine the process, they’ll live through another cultural change initiative. The result? The bright light of promise fades, and cultural change disappears with a final plop under the quicksand.

But don’t think that means culture isn't a powerful force that can drive performance. The issue is not whether strategy or culture should prevail in some fictitious battle royale - we shouldn't be choosing between one or the other, and successful organisations do not build one at the cost of the other. Successful organisations know that a powerful strategy needs to be supported by a powerful and aligned culture.?

The main issue we have had the opportunity to help change in a number of organisations is that their strategy and culture were designed independently and have become misaligned - if they were ever truly aligned in the first place. The wonderful culture designed in a workshop may not fit in with the existing structures and strategies of the organisation, but changing one requires a change in the other, and trying to change one while ignoring the other is a recipe for lackluster performance and a decline in responsiveness to customers when there are changes in the competitive environment, technology and innovation.

If you want a culture of collaboration, but focus incentives and rewards on individual effort, you have misalignment. If you want a culture of incredible customer service but set targets for the length of time people are on the phone, you will develop misalignment. If you ask people to be innovative, but constrain ideas with layers of committees and bureaucracy, you have misalignment. Misalignment breeds dissonance leading to disengagement and erosion of performance.

On the flip side, when an organisation is able to build a high-performance culture that supports their strategies, they are unstoppable. Take Zoom for example, a company that clearly benefited from the Covid-19 pandemic. You can see how growing from ten million users a day to over 200 million in a month would be great for the bottom line, but also create an incredible strain on your team.?

Consider the number of customer service calls increasing by more than twenty times overnight, and processing transactions, account changes, security risks, and complaints all growing exponentially. Despite this, Zoom has an employee net promoter (eNPS) score of 90! In contrast, a competitor, Webex, who was also riding the wave of the pandemic slumped to an eNPS of -34.?

Zoom have focused on maintaining its culture during this period of unprecedented growth. They continue to offer flexibility and employee benefits despite the incredible growth. Leaders across the organisation remain focused on caring for their customers, and Zoom was awarded the Best Company Leadership Award in addition to the Best Place to Work Award 2021.

Zoom does not trade off its culture for performance; they ensure its culture is a key driver of their performance. They have built systems and processes that fit their culture and reinforce the values of the organisation, and while many companies complain that Zoom meetings are killing their culture, the company itself uses its own platforms to enhance engagement. Their Happiness Crew, a group of company volunteers, sets up fun and engaging activities on Zoom, because the Zoom team doesn't dwell on challenges, it looks for solutions through the lens of Zoom’s core value: care.

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Leadership teams are the heart of organisations. If you are a leader looking to build an aligned organisation that drives sustained and purposeful performance across diverse groups of people,?Aligning Culture and Strategy?is for you. It focuses on how leaders and their leadership teams set the foundations for building an aligned organisation that drives sustained and purposeful performance.

Aligning Culture and Strategy?walks you through the experiences and methodologies developed and refined by Daniel Murray at Empathic Consulting to help organisations build strategies and cultures that can overcome the challenges the world throws their way. By following a fictional narrative you will journey through the process of rebuilding a leadership team that is underperforming. Breaking down the critical phases and strategies deployed for ‘Rick, the General Manager of Pop Materials’, you will learn the steps needed to rebuild the strategic and cultural drivers of performance in your team/organisation.

Order your copy of Aligning Culture & Strategy here.

Leaders of Leadership

Well if a book release wasn't enough, I'm also getting close to the release of our new interview series, Leaders of Leadership. Series 1 features some of the most generous and wise leaders in Australia today.

With the energy and passion of Bronwyn Yam , the humble wisdom of Peter Harmer , the honest candidness of Nina Mapson Bone , the purposeful Joanna White and the bubbly brilliance of Rhonda Brighton-Hall FCPHR , this series is a must-watch for anyone wanting to know how they can become a leader worth following.

To access series one, please jump on here and register to receive the whole set! : https://empathicconsulting.com/leaders-of-leadership

As a special bonus, I have 10 copies of my new book to give away to people who register for the Leaders of Leadership Series!

Here are two small taster clips from one of the interviews in this series that I know you will enjoy.

Thanks again for subscribing to my newsletter, I hope you found this useful and I can't wait to hear from you!

Daniel