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A robust, positive Organizational Culture promotes employee satisfaction with their work and the work environment.
Nurturing such a culture necessitates the vigilant management of essential behaviors, which entails searching for and continually reinforcing Bedrock Behaviors.
Bedrock Behaviors are a collection of actions that have the power to create a domino effect, therefore modifying other Behaviors as they pass through an organization. Organizations that recognize and appreciate such behaviors are in a position to develop cultures that go beyond employee engagement and directly boost performance.
Few leaders are aware of the enormous impact of these essential Behaviors, and their efforts to boost performance remain imprecise and dispersed.
Also, leaders find it difficult to resist the temptation of accumulating instructions one after the other.
Even when these directives are aligned with the same ultimate goals, they typically undermine one another.
Furthermore, when these acts are intended to bring about meaningful changes to the culture, they are almost always overly broad, methodical, abstract, and instantaneous.
The culture is deeply ingrained in the beliefs and behaviors of employees, a fact that most leaders are unwilling to recognize. Failure to recognize this fact makes it difficult to effect behavioral changes with enduring effects.
Rather than adopting an all-encompassing strategy to cultural transformation, firms that prioritize simplicity are more effective at inducing behavior change.
Organizations that successfully effect enduring change are those that prioritize the following 3 critical characteristics of culture that drive performance:
- Critical Behaviors—are those procedures for completing jobs in the current operations that may be easily transmitted from one employee to the next.
- Existing Cultural Traits—identify 3 or 4 distinctively well-defined, astutely profound, avidly insightful, and well known cultural characteristics.
- Critical Informal Leaders—are those few employees that actually inspire others by their actions and demeanor.
These 3 important cultural characteristics are often known as the Critical Few behaviors. Clear focus on these 3 essential parts of culture reduces complexity and generates a more hopeful, pleasant, and long-lasting cultural influence on Performance.
Let's examine these components in further detail.
Critical Behaviors
Identifying, clarifying, and gaining widespread support for a Critical Few behaviors exemplifying the business's cultural values is the most important aspect of bringing about cultural change.
When focusing on important behaviors, the intricate and intertwined connections between the Critical Few's components will become immediately obvious.
While attempting to identify and prioritize the Critical Few Behaviors, the desire to eliminate other impediment-causing behaviors must be restrained.
Instead of addressing the major pain problems, such as lack of innovation and lack of teamwork, the focus should be on identifying and encouraging desired behaviors.
Existing Cultural Traits
Almost every organization possesses a modest number of good, important cultural qualities that are a fundamental component of the authentic cultural milieu.
Leaders are responsible for identifying the Existing Cultural Traits that the organization is expected to maintain and develop.
Among the countless admirable attributes, a business should focus on 3 or 4 that are exceptionally clear, astutely intelligent, emotionally formidable, and well known.
Looking for a huge number of characteristics not only makes even the most appealing characteristics look in some ways unconvincing, but also undermines the credibility of the entire process.
When properly discovered and utilized, these characteristics provide employees with a sense of pride and purpose.
Critical Informal Leaders
Since culture is a self-sustaining way of behaving, pondering, believing, and feeling in a specific community, it cannot be altered abruptly.
Focus and effort should be placed on a select few groups and persons within the company who can aid in implementing and sustaining this Transformation.
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Performance Management (also known as Strategic Performance Management, Performance Measurement, Business Performance Management, Enterprise Performance Management, or Corporate Performance Management) is a strategic management approach for monitoring how a business is performing. It describes the methodologies, metrics, processes, systems, and software that are used for monitoring and managing the business performance of an organization.
As Peter Drucker famously said, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it."
Having a structured and robust Strategic Performance Management system (e.g. the Balanced Scorecard) is critical to the sustainable success of any organization; and affects all areas of our organization.
Learn about our Performance Management Best Practice Frameworks here.
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