“Generally, people with greater experience, especially in a successful company, are often resistant to change because they have been successfully doing things the way they have been used to, not realising that the context has changed… That’s entirely human.” – Ravi Kant, MD of Tata Motors
Strong cultures create strong organisations. The dominance of a coherent culture is an essential quality of excellent and consistently performing companies. The more cohesive, and the more focused on delivering value to the customer, the less the need for policy manuals, detailed procedures and rules. The best leaders and the best companies, understand that the real drivers of long term business success is a focus on customers and employee relationships, as both are sources of competitive advantage that will ultimately deliver on shareholder and stakeholder expectations. A culture that emphasizes values and ethics in decision making and execution are the foundations for both.
Research consistently shows that effective cultures create 20 – 30 percent uplift in performance when compared with “culturally unremarkable” competitors. In a 2011 US-based Booz Allen study, 44% of businesses showed an alignment between culture, strategy and business goals, and they delivered 33 percent higher enterprise value growth and 17 percent higher profit growth than those lacking such a tight alignment.
Our approach is to work through a five stage iterative process, to identify the current cultural norms, and determine what culture is desired in order to deliver on strategic intentions, map and then implement an integrated range of interventions that will create the consciousness, mindset and behaviour shifts to deliver the new culture.