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Moving to a 'consequential corporate culture'

Guest post by: Ian Windle

Article Overview: In any organisation it is the behaviour of its’ people that lead to success, mediocrity or failure. Behaviours stem from a set of values that the organisation must understand and that leadership must role model. Behaviours must also have consequences for the values to have any credibility; an up side for good behaviour in terms of recognition and reward and a downside for poor behaviour in terms of challenge, coaching, training and development and perhaps even having to leave the organisation. In the article we provide 10 areas that you must focus on to embed values and the right behaviours in your business.

Moving to a 'consequential corporate culture'

In any organisation it is the behaviour of its’ people that lead to success, mediocrity or failure. In The Heart of Change[1] John Kotter says that the most fundamental problem in all of the stages of change is that of changing the behaviour of people. Having a great strategy can be intellectually stimulating to develop, but in itself achieves nothing. Creating the right structure can allow an organisation a fighting chance of operating more effectively and should compliment the strategy, but doesn’t affect behaviour. And good processes and systems are vital in aligning people, providing consistency and enabling more efficiency.

So where do behaviours come from? First of all they need to be established. With a set of values, behaviours can be extracted that show people what they look like and what they can achieve. Different parts of an organisation will have slightly different behaviours, which deliver a common theme and reinforce the values. The values themselves must reflect the culture the organisation wants to be, not the one it is now. This is more difficult than you think, as values are often created by a group of Execs on an away day and are grounded in current thinking and not in the context of a vision of where you want to be. It is a truism to say that if you want there to be a new culture you have to act ‘counter-culturally’ to get there. In other words you have to act in the new way, not the current way.

Behaviours must also have consequences for the values to have any credibility; an up side for good behaviour in terms of recognition and reward and a downside for poor behaviour in terms of challenge, coaching, training and development and perhaps even having to leave the organisation.

With a set of values and behaviours established everything else must then be in support of them, otherwise you have wasted your time. Your Performance Management system, communications and your leadership behaviours must be aligned behind and support the values. Here are ten areas you must align in your business:

1. Do you recruit people based on your values? How well are you aware of the way they have behaved in their previous jobs? Have you taken verbal references; have you assessed their behaviours in assessment centre conditions, have you quizzed them at interview to give examples of previous behaviour?

2. Do you induct people into your values? Are your values explained and discussed during induction? How much time and attention is put to this, or are you paying lip service to it?

3. Is your appraisal process linked to your values? It is no good just appraising whether people have taken action, they must be evaluated on how they did it too, otherwise the wrong behaviours may be seen as supported and even encouraged.

4. Are good behaviours recognised and rewarded? Do you have a recognition and reward programme that recognises good behaviour and rewards individuals and teams?

5. Are bad behaviours addressed and people coached out of them by managers/ leaders in your business?

6. How well do your communication channels help to embed the values internally in the business?

7. How aligned is your external communications and PR behind your values, telling good news stories of how your business lives its values?

8. Are your leaders role modelling the values in the way they act and the stories they tell?

9. If ‘Challenge’ is not one of your values, then how often do your people challenge each other when they see values not being lived?

10. How engaged have your people been in understanding and seeing the big picture of why the values are important, what they can do for the business and what their role is in living them?

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Article Tags: appraisal, behaviours, consequences, employee engagement, induction, leadership, performance management, reward and recognition, Values



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