Why should organizations invest into building a constructive corporate culture? What is the role of leadership in communicating and making the envisioned cultural shift happen? And is there a way to measure progress when it comes to complex cultural development initiatives?
The topic of organizational culture is high on the agendas of today’s corporate leaders. The times when success was guaranteed — once you had the right long-term strategy in place — are over. Change, volatility and uncertainty are an integral part of our lives now. In other words, the predictability of what is going to happen in the coming years in a certain sector or market is much lower today than it used to be a decade or two decades ago.
It is therefore increasingly important to build flexible, adaptive, innovative and resilient organizations and teams that can — and will — face adversities in whatever form they present themselves in. Having the right culture has become “the competitive advantage” that differentiates those who are left behind and become obsolete from the winners of the future. Plus, by now it is also clear that companies with a constructive culture and an empowering leadership team are more attractive to the young generations than the ones working in a traditional hierarchical model.
But have you heard and thought about the concept of “culture as a benefit”? Successful corporate leaders supported by their outstanding HR departments are putting loads of energy, time and money into raising employee satisfaction, increasing engagement levels and providing the right employee experience to attract, develop and retain talent and the best professionals, but in fact, most of the HR budget is still spent on wages, bonuses and other benefits aiming to make our colleagues happy and motivated to deliver.
We all know that if you work in an organization where the climate is excellent, where your leaders respect, support and appreciate you, where your colleagues are collaborating for success and where you can grow and get the most out of your talent, then it will be very unlikely that you want to move to another — less constructive — organization, even if they promised you a higher salary or a bunch of new benefits.
In these instances, your organizational culture becomes “the benefit” people are looking for, it will determine whether your employees stay or go, and it will be the attribute that makes your organization attractive and competitive on the labor market. Therefore, investing into developing the right corporate culture, that supports your strategy constructively, makes sense, as it pays back in multiple ways, many times already in the short run.
So how shall we get started? What are the key steps leadership should take during a well-designed cultural development process?
The first thing leaders should think about is values and behaviors they want to see growing in their respective organization or unit. What is the ideal, envisioned culture that supports the strategy of the organization? What are the behaviors our colleagues should exhibit day by day? Defining, declaring, and role-modelling these behaviors in a clear, aligned, and unified way is the first step of the journey.
Then there are multiple ways — qualitative and quantitative as well — of measuring how close is your culture today to your envisioned culture. The “Human Synergistics Toolkit” allows you to quantify how constructive is your culture, what are the major causes of the gaps between what would be ideal and what is currently present, and it also gives you clear indications on how to intervene, push your scores higher, make your organization tick faster and better.
The interventions then can range from clarifying and communicating your vision, your story, your strategy better, restructuring your organization and your processes, developing your HR systems, positioning and branding your HR initiatives better, training and coaching your key employees and leaders to be more skillful at how they manage their tasks and lead their teams, improving cooperation within and between units, teaching the organization how to solve problems and conflicts constructively, making the operation more resilient, innovative and agile.
The key here is that all interventions should be well planned, laid out and harmonized, and that all cultural development efforts and achievements along the road should be made visible to as many of your colleagues as possible. So, onboarding your colleagues, and especially the ones who others trust and follow, is of utmost importance. Luckily with technology, today we can already map very precisely who are the real influencers in your organization. Using “Maven7’s OrgMapper Solutions” your messages will now reach all your colleagues, white and blue collars included.
Last, but not least, measuring progress is possible and necessary, even when it comes to investing into something as soft as culture. Whatever you measure and manage professionally, will indeed grow, and that is true for your investment into developing your people and your corporate culture as well. If the diagnosis at the beginning of the process was done professionally, then it will be easy to re-measure and quantify the progress made and the ROI achieved. And when a cultural development process is successful, it will indeed have a serious, easy to recognize, positive impact on your HR metrics and the results of your next employee engagement survey as well.
Péter Kalmár
Managing Partner
Flow International
I’ve been working in HR field at companies for 27 years, 24 out of these as HR manager. I gained experience in companies of all types and sizes, from large American multinationals to large Hungarian companies, from FMCG to agriculture and the IT Telco sector.
Co-Founder of FLOW Group International, I combine a passion for future trends and innovative approaches to life improvement, with expertise in People, Organizations and Culture Development.
Ian’s talent is translating complexity into simplicity. This applies especially well in his chosen areas of M&A, Leadership, Executive Coaching, Executive Team Alignment, Change Management & Strategy which he performs all over the world.
Organization Development Consultant, Leadership Expert, Facilitator and Business Simulations Trainer. Partner and Consultant at Flow Group in Central Asia. Professionally helps people and organizations to reinvent and transform through changes to build lasting impact.
I am a qualified economist and have an MBA degree. After 7 years in HR consulting I spent 4 years in senior management positions working for ICT companies. I returned to consulting in the spring of 2005 as an associate managing director of Creanova; I work as a partner and senior consultant/trainer of the Flow Group.
Starting out at the University of Economics and most of all with the priceless experience AIESEC provided to me in as a student, I can now look back on a multifarious, colorful and successful career of 20 years.
Economist by education, Organization Development consultant by profession, one of the founding partners of Flow. I had my share of middle and top-level management exercise in multinational environment at the early years of my professional career. During the 35 years gained experience in the airline and courier industries, built a few successful consulting organizations, steered a school and a technology start-up. Experienced in leadership on the practical and the development sides as well. Recently I’ve enjoyed working in agile leadership and Organizational Network Analysis.
I am an organization development consultant, a senior trainer, a founding member and the managing partner of the Flow Group. I have been into organization development for 15 years and have 20 years of experience with running training courses.
Andrea Frenyo
