Improving the culture is a crucial aspect of improving any organisation and can be more difficult the larger the organisation is.
Culture has been proven to be the biggest determinant of performance and productivity.
I help my clients effectively change their culture with the following steps:
- Get shared clarity about the values that determines how everyone thinks, decides and acts, what they do and don’t do. This is a first must-do.
- Get shared clarity about the organisation’s compelling vision, which is an expression of the values.
- Ensure the entire leadership team is aligned, committed and modelling the values and with those values, pursuing the vision.
- Gain shared agreement across the organisation about role clarity and standards of output, accountabilities, responsibilities and consequences - ranging from acknowledgement of great work, through to correction and even dismissal.
- All leaders, managers and supervisors use an effective coaching process to help staff improve.
- Ensure all communication is effective, timely and appropriate.
- Ensure the systems and processes are simple, effective and refreshed, because they decay over time.
- Invest in the personal and professional development of everyone. You improve the organisation by improving the people.
- Measure what matters most, both lag indicators (past results) and lead (prospective) indicators, including the culture because culture has the biggest impact on performance and productivity, and leadership has the biggest impact on culture.
- Remember to celebrate the wins and review and learn from everything.
- Conduct regular (annual) inclusive whole of organisation reflection and renewal, using processes such as Open Space Technology, to refresh and nurture a positive desirable culture.
In my experience organisations of about 150 staff can achieve their desired culture in about 12 months. If there are more than 150, it will take longer.
It’s useful to remember these two points:
- The culture will be determined by what the leaders tolerate, support, model or don’t know about.
- The staff will treat customers the way staff are treated by their leaders.
What else can we add to these?
