Kate Derry – TalentIdentify

A 5-step guide to managing culture

Kate Derry — Mon, 27 May 2019 13:09:32 +0000

A Forbes study revealed that, although culture was a top-three priority for company boards, only 20% actually spent the time required to manage and improve it. Hardly surprising, given that even industry experts often seem to be at a loss when it comes to measuring, managing and changing culture. Despite ‘culture’ being the buzz word of the last few years, many of us are still left to ponder… what actually is it?

A company’s culture is like the personality of the company. It is how most of the people who make up the group behave (all of them, not just the leaders) and the underlying values that motivate these behaviours. More simply, culture is the tacit common experience of ‘how (and why) things are done around here’. Culture is made of instinctive and largely subconscious habits, attitudes and beliefs. Symbolic artefacts do not define a culture. They may help strengthen culture, but only if they are consistent with the operating values.

Cultures are also constantly evolving, responding to changes in the environment, to the membership, and to the leadership. When the company’s culture is aligned with its vision and strategy, culture is a formidable ally. If not, culture can undermine even the best laid strategic and operational plans. The truth is that the vast majority of business transformations fail, and the biggest impediment is culture. Can you afford to keep guessing at culture?

To take the reins on culture, it’s clear why more and more executives are turning to organisational psychologists. Psychology is the field of science dedicated to understanding human motivations, behaviour and mental processes. Like most personality change, culture change won’t be swift or easy, and a desire to change isn’t enough… you have to follow through. The good news is, it is possible if you are willing to invest in it.

So where can you start?

Get clear on what culture is and why it matters

Culture is not a quick-fix for employee dissatisfaction, increasing competition, or declining revenue. Culture is about long-term value creation and competitive advantage. The benefits of culture include employee engagement and motivation, operational efficiency and quality, customer loyalty, and ultimately revenue and shareholder performance. Furthermore, a well-aligned culture can protect a company from disrupted industry and economic uncertainty… but it’s important for leaders to take culture seriously before they find themselves under external scrutiny.

You can only manage what you can measure

To be able to look objectively at your culture, you will need to devote resources to evaluating and understanding it. Culture is people, but how do we measure that? Indicators of employee engagement or organisational performance will show you the consequences of culture, but the antecedent to culture is individual values. These are not the company values brainstormed by the leadership team and posted on the website. They are the actual behaviours and underlying values of every employee. Culture is represented by the majority rule. If you want to start taking culture seriously, HR needs valid and reliable metrics and companywide collaboration.

Be accountable to the data

If your actual operating culture violates the beliefs and values articulated in your stated or aspirational culture, you need to get real about the discrepancy. Get rid of confusing or contradictory values. Employees and customers alike can sense this pretense and it will have a corrosive effect on morale. Once you are clear idea about where you are and what your aspirational culture (where you want to be) looks like, communicate your intentions to employees and open the floor to genuine and safe dialogue around how your values will be defined and delivered.

You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?

Managing culture requires both a top-down and bottom-up approach. The tone at the top is critical. Leaders must embody the organisational values in their daily behaviours. In order to feel competent at this, development programs and training opportunities can be introduced. HR also needs to demonstrate good stewardship, understand behaviour throughout the company, and align company values with incentives (benefits, compensation, promotion, development, recruitment) and role design. Good data and analytics are crucial to managing culture. If you can’t spot problems you can’t address them!

Monitor and maintain

Start slowly by focusing on changing 2 or 3 measurable behaviours that are a part of your everyday routines. Line management can gradually impose new rules and devote resources to evaluating culture strength and change. Furthermore, as the organisation reaches different stages of growth and adapts to new markets and strategies, the aspirational cultural style may change as well.

Warning: A strong culture can be a roadblock to success if misaligned with strategy. In our next blog we will be looking into how leaders design aspirational cultures.

Dr. Kate Derry

Dr. Kate Derry specialises in self-psychology. Her research demonstrates that how people think about themselves has a large impact on how they function, both internally and with the world around them. Kate believes that self-insight and acceptance is the first step towards optimisation and positive change. She is a published author and has worked in the space of entrepreneurship, innovation and education. Kate combines her skills in research and development, as well as science communication, to deliver more actionable and reliable people insights.

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There’s no point discussing culture until you’ve identified it

Kate Derry — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 03:34:41 +0000

There are two components to culture: 1) strength and 2) style. Most of the time when we talk about culture colloquially, we are talking about strength. A Harvard study of more than 200 companies found that a strong culture can increase net income by more than 700% over ten years. This kind of statement seems to suggest that good culture is a ‘one size fits all’ solution. However, Pixar, Google and Huawei all have strong cultures, yet also distinctly different cultures.

There’s no point trying to strengthen your culture unless you know what kind of culture you need to strengthen.

Agility is about knowing how to adapt to a changing environment without dampening your vision. In this way, culture change is generally not about making your current culture stronger, but adapting your cultural style to internal or external demands. HBR conducted a comprehensive review of organisational culture styles and found eight complex and diverse pattern of behaviour which define the culture framework. What does this mean? There is no single best cultural style. Determining which style is optimal for your business depends on where you are, where you want to be and what context you operate in.

Culture style is about looking at what values really drive your vision, and what values might get in the way. Inherent in the culture framework are fundamental value trade-offs, or choices you need to make to develop your culture in the right direction. What is more important to you? Flexibility or stability? Independence or interdependence? Trying to prioritise everything will generally create resistance. For example, many organisations state that they value both ‘results’ and ‘caring’ but natural constraints in human behaviour will make this combination confusing to most employees. Are they supposed to be performance-focused (prioritising independence and stability… think Huawei) or people-focused (prioritising interdependence and flexibility… think Pixar)?

Having competing values will naturally limit the extent to which both are able to be expressed and create a weaker culture.

To optimise performance and engagement, we need to start thinking about culture. But to grow or change your culture, it’s first necessary to determine the style of culture you want to strengthen. This means getting clear on exactly what values and competencies are needed to bring your vision and strategy to life.

Once you establish what kind of culture style you need, it is then necessary to shine a spotlight on what kind of culture you have. You can diagnose your ideal culture by carefully considering your business plan and leadership talents… but diagnosing your current operating culture is more difficult.

Culture is the sum of the values of each person in a group. Identifying your organisational values is not about posting what you want on your website (your ideal culture), it is about looking objectively at what currently drives behaviour in your organisation. This means identifying what your people actually value (your operating culture). Only then can you begin to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

Is your organisation aligned in its operating vs ideal culture?

If there is an inconsistency between the values you state for your business and what your employees actually do, you’re in trouble. Humans naturally attune to that inconsistency and it will have a corrosive effect on both employee and customer engagement… and ultimately your performance.

Culture style needs to enroll more than the top decision-makers. It needs to filter into all aspects of the business – people, practices, structures, systems and processes. Leading with integrity means you need to walk the walk (act in line with your stated values), and attract and retain people who are able to walk that walk with you. The key to growing your culture is identification. Only once you have identified the gap between what you have and what you need can you create effective communication and action.

This is where culture strength comes in. How committed are you to strengthening your culture style? How committed are you to ensuring your employees actions are supporting your vision and strategy? Organisational values should be clear to everyone and consistently shared, enacted and reinforced throughout the organisation. You can develop culture from within or recruit outsiders to direct or strengthen the kind of change you need.

Before you can strengthen the culture you need, you need to diagnose the culture you have.

www.talentidentify.com

Dr. Kate Derry

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Engagement drives productivity… what drives engagement?

Kate Derry — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 00:44:29 +0000

Everyone is talking about engagement. This is probably because research studies have consistently shown that employee engagement is the common thread between profitability, productivity, employee retention and loyalty. According to Gallup, two thirds of full-time employees are disengaged at work and this results in billions of dollars’ worth of lost productivity. It seems clear that our current performance models are not working. What is less clear is how to create an engaged workforce in our increasingly disrupted and volatile business landscape…

By ‘not working’ it’s important to distinguish between thriving and surviving employees. Disengaged employees still achieve the bottom line (surviving). They show up at 9am, look busy, do just enough work, and leave again at 5pm. These employees bring their C-game to work. But they are unhappy, unmotivated and it’s evident in their output and your turnover. Engaged employees bring their A-game. These employees are enthusiastic, productive and they take initiative, going over and above what is expected of them. These employees are thriving.

The answer to having this kind of A-game advantage is corporate culture. Yet culture is one of the most frequently overlooked determinants of performance.

Culture is the unspoken driver of attitudes and behaviours in a group and resides in their shared values. We often think of culture as ethnicity. But experientially we have all felt culture on a smaller scale. Think about the teams, groups, families or classes you have experienced. In some teams there was a lot of flexibility around how things are done, while in others everyone followed the rules; in some teams the focus was on working together, but in others it was all about figuring it out on your own; some teams emphasised learning whereas others focused on results. Furthermore, what worked for you might not have worked for everyone. In each environment, some members of the team thrived and others didn’t. Some shared the same underlying values.

Culture is that invisible feeling that creates tension or comfort; that thwarts or enables our engagement and subsequent motivation. Although intelligence is somewhat innate, motivation is extremely responsive to the environment. A person with an average IQ and high motivation will outperform a person with a high IQ and average motivation every time. In the same way a football team with the most talented players who haven’t learned to work together will be outperformed by a team of less skilled players who have.

Every employee has the ability to play at their A-game or their C-game, what matters is whether their environment is supporting them to thrive, or simply survive.

While the difference between two workers’ A-game is a measure of their personal ability, the difference between each worker’s A-and-C is influenced by culture. Selecting the highest A-game from several job applicants is a question of job-fit, getting an employee to perform at their A-game instead of their C-game is a question of culture-fit. Both are essential to high performing teams, yet we have tended to focus on job-fit. This is changing. A recent report by High-Impact Talent Acquisition showed a clear trend in high performing organisations toward the latter (hiring for culture-fit) and on improving their employee’s experience (culture development).

To guide your ship in the right direction, whether it’s your classroom, your home, or your organisation, you need to tune into culture. And the sooner you start the better. Over time culture reinforces mindsets and behaviour-patterns and grows increasingly resistant to change. It’s imperative that leaders learn to encourage and reinforce the behaviours they need to bring their business plan to life. But how?

Strong culture is not grown by telling people what to do, but by showing them. Command-and-control management styles are losing ground. Enforcing definitive consequences for bad (or C-game) behaviour won’t work if your culture is not where you need it to be. Workers motivated by fear will do what it takes to avoid punishment… and nothing more. They will also jump ship at their first chance, perhaps taking their A-game to your competitor. On the other hand, workers motivated by shared values and purpose are more productive, effective, and committed. So what kind of culture is best?

Unfortunately, there is not one easy answer. Rather there are eight distinct cultural styles.

Each organisation may need a different kind of culture depending on how their people currently think, what they want to achieve, and where they are. Culture will evolve over time as the business reaches different phases of its life cycle. This means that what worked in the past may not necessarily be able to get you to where you want to be in the future. Responding to a disruption or crisis may require driving a completely new culture. Similarly, what worked for one organisation may not work for another – even despite being in the same industry. What is essential to your ultimate success is that your culture is consistent and aligned with your strategy and story.

If you have a problem with engagement, the culture you have isn’t working anymore. Even the most authentic purpose and carefully laid business plan will derail if the right culture is not there to support it. Words on paper don’t achieve the outcomes you want, people do. Right now, your culture is developing whether you are steering the ship or not. To mitigate the risks of a misaligned culture and maximise the benefits of strategy-supportive culture, start by diagnosing your personal values and organisational culture today.

www.talentidentify.com/

Dr. Kate Derry

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