The details of a growing and/or maintaining your company’s high performance culture are unique to your organization. That’s because they are based on what works best for you to get you to where you want to go within the parameters you have defined.
There are, however, 10 common steps which most of our customers find helps grow a performance-focused culture. In this first part of two blogs, we consider the first five. Clearly define what you consider to be success – define what moderate and best-case success looks like from a variety of perspectives – sales, marketing, customer service, finance, operations and so on. Communicate vision and values – from the top-down, your company should communicate a vision and with the help of HR, the picture of the culture they are striving for. The cascading of visions and values in a small or medium sized business can often be a faster process than within larger, less agile companies. We recommend documenting your visions as part of a charter or mandate.
By going beyond guiding principles or values and drilling down to identify behaviors that support these values your company will be able to create the foundations of a charter to guide your path towards a performance culture. Things to consider include – what areas of our current culture do we think actually works? What preferred behaviors do we need to be able to produce the culture we want? What activities currently get rewarded? Which unacceptable behaviors are currently tolerated? How do we measure up against each of our preferred behaviors? How can we continue to monitor and measure performance? Set big targets but be careful not to push too hard! Our customers often find that their employees tend to rise to the standard set for them. The more you expect, the more they will achieve. There is, however, a fine line between good ‘stretch’ targets, which can energize an organization, and bad ones, which can dampen morale and have an adverse effect on productivity.
Help your people appreciate how they contribute to the ‘Big Picture’. Regardless of the level and role of the employee, he or she should be able to understand and express how their efforts feed into the broader company strategy. Employees who don’t understand the roles they play in company success are more likely to become disengaged. Most employees want to be a part of a compelling future, want to know what is most important at work and what excellence looks like in the eyes of management. For targets to be meaningful and effective in motivating employees, they should be connected to larger organizational ambitions.
Create and nurture a mindset of ownership:
Encouraging your employees think and act like an “owner” of their projects helps them feel empowered with the freedom to decide and act. We find that not only does this support efforts to ensure accountability, it is a great approach to identify and develop your companies top performers! In 10 Steps to Creating and Developing a Corporate Culture of Excellence: Part Two we will check out the second five tips to grow your company through developing a performance-orientated approach.
