Services

All of our products and services are built off the high performance culture model.

Organisational Culture and Performance

In 1992, John Kotter and James Heskett of Harvard published their research on the link between organisational culture and performance. Although several years have passed, studies since then have supported and strengthened the four key findings of that research:

Corporate culture can have a significant impact on long term economic performance.

  1. Corporate culture will probably be an even more important factor in determining the success or failure of firms in the next decade. (and indeed this has been the case and continues)
  2. Corporate cultures that inhibit strong long-term financial performance are not rare; they develop easily, even in organisations that are full of reasonable and intelligent people.
  3. Although tough to change, corporate cultures can be made more performance enhancing.

Knowing this, it would make sense that any company wanting to ensure a sustainable future should put greater focus on understanding and managing culture by design. Effective organisations are those who understand the concepts and apply them with a clear purpose. These organisations understand that the link between Reputation and Brand/Culture and Performance, is inextricable.

The idea of managing culture is often seen as social engineering in a way and therefore becomes almost unpalatable to many leadership teams.  However, whether we like it or not, senior staff are responsible for ensuring that the human capability in the organisation is bound together in such a way as to optimise chances of success.  This means that the jigsaw puzzle that makes up the organisation, (people, property, technology, product, process, practice, etc) must all be as much aligned as possible to achieve the desired outcomes. It must be accepted by senior leaders that any change in one of these dimensions will have an effect in the others.

From a straight out people perspective, (and simplistically) the HR core processes of recruitment, reward and recognition, talent management, can only be effective if we are clear on how they support the kind of culture that we want. These processes enable management (in the main - middle management), to ‘actively’ manage culture. Managing culture is all about understanding and reinforcing the behaviours that are key to sustaining the organisation.

Consequently, it is imperative that we define the desired culture. Unfortunately, for most organisations, culture seems to be a very difficult thing to define. There are several beliefs regarding organisational culture and sadly, many are based in myth rather than on real evidence. Too many organisations have fallen into the trap of confusing ‘climate’ and ‘culture’. We need to avoid this if we are to make progress.