“Culture eats strategy for lunch every day”
This famous quote from Dick Clark, CEO Merck − the pharmaceutical company − is a great illustration of the fact that more companies are interested in knowing how they can measure their performance cultures.
Before you start measuring, here are some highlights to take into consideration when building a performance culture:
Make sure your brand and internal culture add up
Most companies spend lots of time and effort creating a unique brand that secures a competitive position in their industry. But is there a match between the company you want to be for your customers and the company you are today for your employees?
If not, you are probably losing out on some great performance. According to Swedish research, companies that are able to link their external brand and image with their internal performance culture usually perform twice as well as their peers.
Create engagement for execution
Unlike strategy definition, Strategy Execution is everyone’s job. So, you need to have everyone on board − and staying there − to make it happen.
So, in brief: if you want your people to go the extra mile – in the same direction as your brand! – you need to create, and actively manage, your unique winning performance culture.
And as your positioning and strategy evolve, your culture needs to evolve with them. Because your company culture can eat your fantastic strategy alive in no time, any day of the week.
On to measuring your performance culture − there are several ways to do this:
Discover your strengths and weaknesses regarding Strategy Execution by completing our in-depth Strategy Execution Benchmark. The result will provide you with a general overview of where you are compared to “Best-in-class” companies and within your industry. Check out the benchmark and survey section.
Conduct a CTT (Cultural Transformation Tool®) scan. Research conducted by McKinsey has shown Cultural Transformation Tools to be the most effective tools for formulating, measuring and managing a corporate culture.
And corporate culture is the ultimate factor in attracting and retaining talented employees and increasing your company’s performance, both in hard (financial) and soft (HR) terms.
What you can expect from applying the CTT method:
- Stimulus for the top level of your organisation to integrate values within your systems and processes;
- The model specifies a clear direction for the development of your cultural capital.
- Both your current and desired corporate cultures are mapped out in detail − including a comprehensive report that describes the strengths and weaknesses of your organisation, including its condition on an individual, relational, organisational and societal level;
