Creating culture

Company culture strategy

Do you have a company culture strategy? No company through whose doors I have to date entered has surprised me by having a strategy for developing a distinctive company culture. Of course, each company has a culture.

Why have a culture by default? One that just happened? It would seem that many owners do not realize the competitive advantage which a specific culture strategy is able to provide. Consequently, few purposefully develop a culture containing norms which are important to them, for example, reflecting:

  • employees first, clients second or Team First, Clients Second (TFCS)
  • a customer-centric culture
  • an innovative culture
  • high achievement

Employee and Client-Engagement Culture

Consider creating a culture that covers the best of all the listed possibilities. Consider an employee-engagement culture and its counterpart, the flip side of the coin, an engaged-customer/client culture.

I believe that a focus on employees first, clients second is the culture which covers all of the above. Your clients benefit tremendously if your employees truly understand and really know what they are doing.

What's your company's culture?

Have a good look at your company culture. Is it a pleasure to come to work? Or is it often a frustrating experience? Organisations that develop optimal cultures draw and retain the best people. Companies with average people and weak cultures take longer to achieve anything - and they seldom achieve great heights. Culture has a human and financial dimension. Make a solid investment.

Talented people are mobile

Talented people who are well qualified and experienced are mobile. Their expectations are different. They seek not only jobs but they carefully select companies for which they are prepared to work. "Where is it more stimulating, where can I personally grow and learn? Where will I be allowed to develop my strengths; which organisational culture provides real scope for the individual?"

Best place to work for?

Top companies purposefully build unique cultures and internal conditions which ensure that they attract the best people in their fields of specialisation. The USA business magazine, Fortune, annually publishes the results of surveys which are conducted in the USA and in Europe about the best companies to work for. These companies get high marks from their employees - and from investors. They are great companies to work for.

Is your company culture a stong drawing card in acquiring and retaining clients? Emotionally-engaged employees create emotionally-engaged clients not because these employees are engaged, but as they more likely to see meaning in everything they do than those who just come to work.

Leaders to a growing extent grasp the direct link between high-performance/client-engagement cultures and high profits.

Culture strategy

ABPLAN offers the development of a Culture Strategy. We use a survey in which management and employees participate. We supplement this in larger organisations with a cultural diagnostic conducted by means of personal discussions, one person at a time, with top management, middle management, the front-line supervisors and a cross-section of the front line. The diagnostic is aimed at establishing cultural values as expressed in the behaviours, symbols and systems which exist within a company.

There is a fine distinction between culture and climate. The latter covers the daily weather conditions. ("Blue Monday" today.) Culture has to do with how people generally feel about the company and prevailing conditions.

Cultural questions are aimed at establishing "what is valued around here." Creating a specific culture takes anything up to 24 months in a small company to three or more years in a large company. Its worth the effort.  Getting you on the culture road is a matter of creating an awareness of the importance of culture - and of the impact of culture on your business. Then integrate cultural objectives in your Balanced Scorecard. You could be on track within six months.

A company's Culture Strategy would link directly to Organisation Capital of the Learning and Growth Perspective of the Balanced Scorecard.

Culture cannot be copied

The competition can copy your products, services and even your systems exactly,  but they cannot copy a great culture. Companies who have great cultures are proud of this competitive advantage - in business terms and in their ability to draw the right employees and the right clients.

Create work conditions in which your employees can flourish and grow and link it to a client-engagement culture. Your company will flourish and grow.

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Last modified: 19-11-2011