Is culture as important as it seems to be nowadays? What can we do to build it the way we want for our company to succeed?
“Culture” was the Merriam-Webster word of the year in 2014. As James Lawther mentioned in his blog , one of the reasons may be that management gurus proclaim that “if you fix your culture it will fix your business”.
They may be right, but that doesn’t mean that fixing the culture is easy. As James quotes, culture is “The ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people”. This mixture is so complex that culture is built over time, and learnt by example, so the reinforcement of behaviors is key in its design.
But, what do we really mean by fixing a culture? It means that all the businesses already have a culture set, but sometimes it is not the right one to achieve the objectives defined in the annual plans, so it needs to be fixed: new behaviors need to be learnt.
For example, you may want to turn your company the most customer oriented in the market, but if your employees are sad and look unhappy, it will be hard to make your customers perceive that their experience is wow!
So first, you need to define what kind of culture you are looking for. Considering that the most important things in a company are profits and people, the culture could be focused on: Making profit, taking care of your people, or …both?
If you are brave enough to do the effort to run for both, these are the DO’s:
- Think long term: define long term objective, communicate them to the employees and provide resources to meet them. That is, If you plan to improve the quality of your products, you need to provide your employees with trainers and allow time off production to do it!
- Work in teams: focus on a “we” instead of “me” thinking by defining team objectives instead of individual ones so that everyone understand what is that value. Aristotle would said that, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
- Reward all of them: reward people based on team performance to help them meet the team objectives. Many companies are moving from an individual performance ranking towards a profit sharing model where everyone knows how the company is doing and feel responsible for it. Tips sharing is a simple example of this.
- Motivate your people: based on Maslow’s theory of needs, when people are paid fairly, respecting their Autonomy, Mastery, and Purposewill motivate them to do their best. Deciding what to work on or when to do it by setting their own objective; implementing a flex time schedules; requesting tasks neither too difficult nor too easy for their ability; and connecting work to values like socially responsible activities are examples.
- Let them innovate: every employee knows how to do their job better, so just help them do it. Listen to their ideas and provide then with the required tools.
How does your culture look like right now? What are your main barriers towards achieving performance?
Luciana Paulise
2 Comments
Curly Hairstyles · 15 December, 2020 at 5:04 pm
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Luciana Paulise · 21 December, 2020 at 8:19 am
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https://biztorming.com/coaching-with-luciana-paulise/