The Importance of Shaping One Corporate Culture
Corporate culture is the DNA and heartbeat of an organization; it exists by design or by default. And, regardless of their origin, culture either helps or hinders company performance and employee well-being.
Our organizational alignment research found that cultural factors account for 40% of the difference between high and low performing companies and teams in terms of:
- Profitable revenue growth
- Customer retention and satisfaction
- Leadership effectiveness
- Employee engagement
Corporate culture dictates how employees interact, how decisions are made, the way work gets done, and how the company presents itself to clients and stakeholders. And while it is natural to have different team norms, high performing companies know the importance of shaping one corporate culture that everyone can count on and align behind.
Sadly, many organizations struggle with fragmented cultures, especially in global, functionally diverse, and rapidly expanding companies.
The Downside of Fragmented Cultures in an Organization
We know from organizational culture assessment data that when an organization suffers from a fragmented work culture, the consequences can be severe — impacting performance, employee satisfaction, and the bottom line. While decentralization and autonomy have their advantages, a lack of overall cultural unity can lead to:
- Reduced Collaboration and Communication
When work cultures become fragmented, functional silos and workplace politics emerge to fill the voids. This creates inefficiencies where information is not shared, collaboration is stifled, and teams fail to leverage collective intelligence. The absence of constructive cross-functional interactions slows decision-making, stifles company-wide initiatives, and frustrates employees.
- Inconsistent Employee Experience
We know from project postmortem data that employees who feel disconnected from the broader organizational culture tend to struggle with motivation and productivity. A powerful organizational culture provides employees with a sense of belonging and purpose. When cultures are fragmented, employees experience inconsistencies in leadership approaches, company values, and workplace expectations that create confusion, disengagement, and attrition.
- Difficulty in Implementing Lasting Change
Bad corporate subcultures cultures make it difficult to drive lasting organizational change. Change management consulting experts know that when different teams or departments operate under varied cultural norms, implementing company-wide initiatives becomes almost impossible. We know from change management simulation data that change resistance increases when teams prioritize their subcultures over the organization’s larger vision.
- Decline in Customer Experience
A fragmented culture does not just affect internal dynamics — it also bleeds through to negatively impact external stakeholders. When employees across different departments lack a unified customer approach, the customer experience is inconsistent. Conflicting information and varying levels of service erode the customer trust and loyalty required to live your brand promise.
- Weakened Organizational Identity
An organization’s culture is its identity. Inconsistent cultural norms make it difficult to create and live a compelling employee value proposition. This weakens the organization’s ability to attract, develop, engage, and retain top talent because employees struggle to see meaning without a clear line of sight reinforced by core values and operating principles.
- Reduced Efficiency and Increased Costs
Without cultural cohesion and aligned priorities, inefficiencies, team dysfunction, and operation costs grow. Instead of working toward unified objectives, teams may pursue conflicting goals, duplicate efforts, and waste valuable time and resources. A lack of a shared culture also leads to more misunderstandings and errors, which require additional time and effort to rectify.
4 Steps to Address Misaligned Work Cultures
Organizations can mitigate the downsides of cultural misalignment by taking the proactive steps necessary to shaping one corporate culture:
- Create Strategic Clarity (the What)
Before you can shape corporate culture, you must define where you are headed strategically so that you can define the way people need to think, behave, spend their time, and work to get you there. Strategic clarity accounts for 31% of the difference between high and low performing organizations.
Do your strategy retreats create enough strategic clarity and alignment to set the stage for a healthy, high performing, and aligned workplace culture?
- Agree Upon the Culture (the How) Required to Best Execute Your Strategy
Once your strategy is clear, believable, and implement able enough, your next step is to define the culture required to best deliver on your strategic priorities. When culture is aligned with business objectives, it becomes a powerful force that drives behaviors and decisions in the right direction. We use 10 research-backed cultural dimensions to create practical, transparent, and purposeful alignment between the What (Strategy) and How (Culture).
Are your leaders on the same page regarding the culture required to succeed?
- Identify the Gaps between Your Current and Desired Cultures
Once the needed culture has been defined by the executive team, it is time to use a proven corporate culture assessment to get a reality check of how the rest of the organization perceives the current workplace culture in terms of organizational health and strategic alignment.
Do you need a reality check between your current and desired culture?
- Implement a Practical Plan to Close the Gaps
The next step is to prepare leaders with the tools and practices to connect the What (Strategy) and How (Culture) for their teams. This involves thoughtfully preparing leaders to identify actions and success metrics to close the gaps and sustain cultural transformation.
Do your leaders know how to align strategy and culture for their teams to thrive?
The Bottom Line
A fragmented work culture poses significant challenges to organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Without a unified and aligned culture, economies of scale are not realized, strategies stall, and both employee and customer experiences become inconsistent. To perform at your peak, change leaders actively cultivate a cohesive work environment that aligns strategy and talent with one corporate culture.
To learn more about the importance of one corporate culture, download The 3 Research-backed Levels of a High Performance Culture to Get Right
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