What if you had a tool that could help you accomplish your company’s strategic initiatives? You would keep that tool clean and sharp and always within reach.
That tool is already in your toolbox. It’s your organizational culture, and you’re probably ignoring it. Research finds that the vast majority of executives believe their actions have a direct impact on workplace culture. And they agree their culture could be improved. But less than one out of five executives have done anything about it.
Why is that?
There are many reasons executives choose not to invest the necessary time and resources into understanding their cultures and developing them to support strategic planning and execution.
Executives focus on short-term results
Culture-building is a long game. Initiatives to shape culture require significant efforts and may not have an immediate impact. Short-term objectives and goals are easier to execute and generate faster results. Executives often receive incentives for short-term results, so why wouldn’t they choose the easier path?
Optimizing processes and technology, investing in training, or offering outsized compensation and benefits may move the needle on performance temporarily. And replacing managers and team members or restructuring the organization may feel like a change in culture. Unfortunately, this may actually undermine culture by creating a sense of instability.
It requires self-reflection
Culture reflects leadership and ineffective culture reflects poor leadership. It’s hard and humbling to hold up a mirror and examine what you see. Executives who dig deeply might not like what they find.
Maybe they just don’t know how
Despite the multitude of articles, research reports, and opportunities for executive education, it’s possible that executives just don’t know what to do about culture.
Most CEOs don’t include culture-shaping or -sustaining initiatives within their strategic portfolios. They don’t consider cultural inhibitors and enablers when developing strategic plans. Could it be that the persistent inability of organizations to execute and realize strategic intentions is due to the lack of focus on cultural influences?
Cultural elements are not measured
Many organizations don’t establish key performance indicators to continually assess and improve cultural influences. And executive performance on cultural elements is rarely part of their incentive plans.
Executives confuse core values with peripheral values
An organization establishes core values to describe its essential character and standards of behavior. Core values establish lasting norms, such as honesty, a demand for excellence, and deep caring about people. They are meant to be fundamental and timeless.
Peripheral values are more malleable. These cultural characteristics—such as an innovative mindset or calculated risk-taking—are necessary to enable the strategy. But they don’t typically have the staying power or inviolable nature of core values. They may change as the organization faces new challenges, pursues new opportunities, or hires new executives. (In fact, many organizational cultures are whipsawed by a continual stream of leadership changes. The result is weaker performance, siloes, and differing and confusing leadership agendas.)
Core values must be developed, promoted, and reinforced over time to provide a consistent cultural foundation within a world of constant change.
Organizations would benefit if leaders drove culture
So, what are executive leaders to do? First and foremost, recognize that this is not someone else’s problem to solve.
Creating a motivating environment that engenders camaraderie, storytelling, learning, sharing, caring, and imagination is a good start. While not popular these days, there is a part of leadership responsibility that should be parental. Wisdom gained through experience, both ours and that of others, is too often disregarded in deference to what is in vogue. There are fundamentals in business that will always apply. People respond to deep caring; they also respond to good structure. Most importantly, people will follow trusted, strong, caring leaders.
Aligning leadership and foundational values to strategic initiatives is an opportunity to drive employee engagement and leadership credibility. Strategy ultimately serves a vision or destination whose value should engage both emotional and intellectual senses. Each strategic initiative and goal should be on a trajectory to achieve the vision.
A work environment will develop either by leadership design or default. Allowing it to develop by default surrenders a critical performance advantage and strategic enabler. An effective strategy supported by a positive, motivating culture provides a durable competitive advantage.
This article was adapted from an IPM white paper, “The Biggest Opportunity CEOs Are Ignoring.” Download the white paper →
Authors
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Robert Faneuff
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Mary Chapman
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Authors
-
-
-
Robert Faneuff
-
Mary Chapman