Has your culture strategy hit a brick wall?
“We had huge excitement for the first six months. We did the diagnostic, created the plan, engaged our leaders and had the most awesome launch event. But now we are just not seeing the culture stick or getting the progression we expected.“
“Our habits don’t match our language. Why?”
McKinsey’s Beyond Performance reinforces Kotter’s earlier findings that 70% of organisational change initiatives fail. Beyond Performance 2.0, provides evidence that leaders can more than double their odds of success, from merely thirty percent to almost eighty by applying equal levels of insight and rigour to the “hard” and “soft” elements that matter. That is, attention to your leadership and people development together with attention to organisation systems and organisation design is needed.
Systems are like the engine that keeps the car going. You can have a flashy interior and a sleek body but without a well-designed and functioning engine, you ain’t going anywhere!
Our practices and our systems are our leadership by remote control.
Working on them is not sexy and often not rewarded or regaled…It’s grit work. It’s the secret sauce that will enable you to achieve the ROI on your leadership development. It provides alignment of intent and action.
It starts at the top. Our business strategy sets the tone for what is important and then every system and practice is levelled up from there.
Consider our determination to drive a culture of collaboration. We have most likely built strong communications around this intention and started to build our leader capability to support this. Now let’s look at our performance and remuneration system, and the setting of Executive Team KPIs. Do they provide for bonuses and rewards based on Business Unit success over Enterprise success? If so, unintentionally we are encouraging and rewarding siloed behaviour. Our quest for collaboration has just hit a major brick wall. A re-think of our systems design will provide for an ‘&’ not an ‘or’. That is, BU and Enterprise success through both collaboration and business performance.
As leaders, now is the time to be sure your systems and practices are enabling the environment for the culture you want to nurture and encourage, enabling people to thrive at work.
Consider:
- What is your culture strategy?
- Have you applied equal rigour to the hard and soft elements?
- Will attention to your systems and practices provide a breakthrough for your culture strategy?
Written by Rosemarie Dentesano.
The whitepaper on “A Systems Approach to Culture Alignment’ provides a guide to review and re-design your systems and is available at www.p2psolutions.com.au
Working at the intersection of strategy and culture, Rosemarie collaborates with organisations to create pragmatic culture solutions that work.
She sees her role to provide expert input while working with leaders as they drive culture change within their team. Rosemarie is passionate about building an organisation’s capabilities and promoting cultures that thrive.
If you would like to learn more, please contact Rosemarie on
+61 417 354 117 rosemarie@p2psolutions.com.au linkedin.com/in/rosemariedentesano
