Your culture is your strategy
Because culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, dinner, AND a late night snack!
In a corporate world that too often invests in culture as a last resort to boost morale, a key insight is emerging: Culture is, inherently, a business strategy. And one of the most consequential strategies at that.
Aspects of organizational culture include:
How is conflict handled?
What is the flow of communication?
How transparent is the organization?
Who gets promoted and why?
What does the onboarding process look like?
Do the publicly stated reasons for a recent staff departure align with the hallway conversation about that departure?
All these aspects matter in building a strong organizational culture—and it’s backed by research.
The science behind performance
Jenny Chatman is a researcher on organizational behavior in psychology and a professor of management. While her research affirms conventional wisdom that talent selection is important, it also reveals a more important factor. The socialization process that integrates your talent into the company is even more important than the selection process.
Imagine you just hired that talented person who shined in their interviews, references, and past work. If you undervalue, underutilize, or micromanage them, their talent will be squandered. If your organization has a culture of low accountability or avoids difficult conversations and tough issues, you won’t reap the benefits of your carefully selected talent.
The socialization error
Eventually, employees are socialized into the habits and norms of an organizational culture. So, if your organizational culture has not been strengthened and maximized by the time of their entry, an unhealthy culture can undermine an employee’s effectiveness.
The environment shapes the person’s behavior. If an organization hires high performers and rich talent, but cannot seem to be able to get the group to perform, that’s a sign that it’s a culture problem. And the reality is, this can happen in an organization with pages full of strategic planning.
Intentions vs. actions
Strategic plans are only the beginning. Many organizations have exemplary plans, and yet there is a difference between an organization’s stated intentions and its actions.
The majority of organizations have a stated strategy, but this may not align with the actual strategy used among their teams. In fact, the stated strategy might attract top talent while the actual strategy fails to cultivate that talent.
For example, a company may promise growth and innovation, sparking the interest of a promising candidate. When she begins the role, if the culture lacks psychological safety, then the actual strategy isn’t promoting growth and innovation at all. (Researcher Amy Edmonson has found that employees reporting high levels of psychological safety are more productive and innovative.) Instead, the lived strategy is fear and isolation among employees. Even the most innovative worker cannot produce desired results under this kind of strategy.
Closing the gap
This gap is inherent to human nature. It’s why New Year’s resolutions end by February. It’s also why a company expressing transparency may not have employees who speak up when something is amiss. Because stated goals aren’t always lived out. And to close that gap, organizations need clarity and support.
When I work with organizations, there’s nothing more energizing than helping them do the things that they actually want to do.
Often times, that starts with identifying exactly what the gap is for a particular organization. After a long time of operating in the same way, organizations can have a hard time actually noticing the gap at hand. It is a gamer changer to distribute carefully designed culture surveys and interpret their results with my clients to help uncover that gap.
Once the gap is clearly identified, we start creating a roadmap forward. By developing strategies for closing the gap, and sticking with those strategies, we start to see a marked difference in the organizational culture.
Becoming a learning culture
How does an organization maintain a strong and attractive culture over time? Researchers and leadership experts point to the concept of the deliberately developmental organization. I like to use the phrase “learning culture” because, simply put, everyone in this kind of environment is always learning.
A learning culture breeds a talent strategy. That strategy begins with being an attractive culture that high talent actually seeks out and wants to work for. Then, that talent grows richly in a place that consistently promotes growth and development.
Want to lead this type of organization? Our end-to-end talent solutions can help you become a learning culture set on improving your organization in ways that attract and retain top talent, from day one.