A little more than a year ago I was assigned to my latest leadership role in leading a relatively complex business transformation. In fact, many in my company asked “who did you piss off” when I was assigned in to the role. Almost every aspect of the organization was in trouble from lacking a coherent customer centric strategy, absence of quality talent, lack of disciplined business processes and a technology platform that the core business had outgrown years ago. While all of these issues were and continue to be a challenge a year later the thing that has been by far the biggest challenge is the lack of a high performing culture.
Culture as defined in Northouse is the learned beliefs, values, rules, norms, symbols and traditions that are common to a group of people. (Northouse, 2016) When I was interviewing for my current role, I took the time to do extensive research on the organization through three lenses; employee experience, customer experience and financial results. As I began studying the business, I did a number of things. First, I interviewed a number of employees who worked in the company as well as those who counted on the organization for support or expertise. Second, I interviewed customers and the car carriers that we partner with to do work on behalf of our customers. Third, I took the time to do a deep dive in to the financial results of the company and where and how the business has been invested in over the prior 24 months. As I listened and learned one piece of feedback seemed to always come to the forefront; “the culture there is really bad”. Employees had bad things to say about one another and their leaders, customers and carriers had bad things to say about the employees and leadership and the financial results and investments made failed to produce the return expected. It was, by any definition a mess.
This has not been my first assignment to turn around a business in my career. In fact, most of the work I have done over the last 15 years has been to either lead a large-scale change effort and or turn around a struggling business. The work is tremendously rewarding but it’s not for the faint of heart. One of the leading business consultancy practices in the world, McKinsey and Company suggests that what often separated the highest performing organizations from the rest is culture. Their view of culture is the “cumulative effect of what people do and how they do it-and it determines an organizations performance”. (Dewar & Doucette, 2018). In my organization the culture was not clear on what we were trying to accomplish which led to an unclear view on how people needed to behave to drive results. This combination of a lack of clarity on what we were trying to accomplish only led to confusion on how we needed to behave and operate as individuals and as a team. The McKinsey point of view is that organizations can do 6 things to make itself in to a high performing culture; define behaviors that unlock business performance, uncover root cause mindsets and reframe them, engineer major business initiatives to role model and reinforce the desired culture, adjust work to create a coherent employee experience, produce opportunities for individuals to overcome personal barriers to change and lead the journey in rigorous and employee centric ways. (Dewar & Doucette, 2018). I am pleased to say that we have done many of these things in my organization but have a way to go. By setting what we call our “operating priorities” we have taken away the confusion many had between WHAT we are trying to accomplish and the many HOW’s to achieving the goals that deliver on those priorities. This has allowed us to measure our success in a clear and concise way as we track our employee engagement, customer experience and financial metrics like revenue and EBITDA growth. We are on our way to building a culture, supported by a performing team.
So how do leaders create a high performing team and culture? The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness research program (GLOBE) has identified six global leadership behaviors that can drive these results and I have seen each and every one. They are; charismatic/value-based leadership, team-oriented leadership, participative leadership, humane oriented leadership, autonomous leadership and self-protective leadership. (Northouse, 2016). While all of these behaviors are important and global in nature the different cultural clusters around the world engage differently with each. Thankfully I continue to see our leaders behave with the universally desired attributes like; trustworthy, just, honest, having foresight, planning ahead, encouraging, positive, dynamic, motivating, confidence builder, dependable, intelligent, decisive, effective bargaining, win/win problem solver, communicative, informed, administratively skilled, coordinative, team builder and oriented to excel.
For those who want to transform teams and culture to be high performing the formula is there. It only requires you to make culture a top priority as it is one of the key drivers to business and team performance. (Dewar & Doucette, 2018).
References
Dewar, C., & Doucette, R. (2018, April 9). 6 elements to create a high-performing culture. McKinsey.com. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-organization-blog/6-elements-to-create-a-high-performing-culture
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. 7th Edition. Los Angeles: SAGE