Do You Have the Right Corporate Culture?
Thanks to the success of Netflix and the failure of Volkswagen, more and more companies are beginning to understand how important the right corporate culture can be to creating a high performance culture at work.
Corporate Culture Defined
We define corporate culture as how things are truly accomplished in an organization — the behavioral norms and corporate values that are lived and observed each and every day to get work done. Culture is one of the three critical legs of corporate success. When a company’s culture is aligned with their talent and their business strategy, the organization is heading in the right direction to succeed in the future.
Organizational Alignment Research
Our organizational alignment research shows that the alignment of the right corporate culture and talent with strategy helps companies grow 58% faster and be 72% more profitable while increasing employee engagement 18-to-1.
Seven Questions to Test If You Have the Right Corporate Culture
One quick way to measure the strength of your corporate culture is to ask seven questions to see if you have the right corporate culture for your people and business strategies:
If your answer to any of these questions raises concerns, you had better address them.
4 Ways High Performing Companies Create the Right Corporate Culture
Here are four ways that our high performance clients have worked to strengthen their corporate culture to be “the right corporate culture” for their business and people strategies and, ultimately, their business performance:
You will know you are headed in the right direction when employees clearly understand the company’s plans for future success, believe the organization will be successful in the future, and understand how their job helps the organization achieve success.
The investment in employee capabilities helps retain top talent, gives firms a competitive edge and highlights the stated value of continuous learning and development. You will know you are on the right path when employees believe they have been properly trained to do their job, are effectively cross-trained to do other jobs, and have consistent opportunities to learn new skills that will help them and their team succeed.
In short, managers became the instruments of raising performance levels across the board. You will know you are on the right path when people consistently go the extra mile to achieve great results, goals and accountabilities are clear to everyone on the team, individual strengths are leveraged often, and people are committed to producing top quality work.
This motivates people to stay and perform. They also define the consequences associated with sub-standard performance. This motivates people to avoid failure.
You will know you are on the right path when people believe that your organization makes investments to make them more successful, the leaders value people as their most important resource, and the organization is committed to making it a great place to work.
The Bottom Line
Be deliberate about creating the right corporate culture for your unique situation that aligns with your talent and business strategies. You will reap the rewards well into the future.
To learn more about how to create the right corporate culture, download The 3 Must-Have Levels of a High Performance Culture to Align to Your People to Your Business
Explore real world results for clients like you striving to create higher performance