Leadership
and Culture

LEADERSHIP

We believe employees are looking to leaders for inspiration and clarity and looking to workplaces for a sense of belonging through a connection to a common purpose. Inspirational leaders provide space for people to grow, freedom within a framework to make decisions, the appropriate resources to do their jobs, and clarity over roles, vision, and purpose. Leaders set the standard by role modeling agreed behaviors (Values) and hold themselves and others to account for any misalignment to this (Culture).

When vision and purpose are effectively and consistently communicated and understood by your team, this creates alignment and purpose for others. Your team will understand the direction the organisation is moving in and feel empowered and invested in their roles. Employee engagement, retention, and recruitment are more than just remuneration!

It sounds complicated but really it is just about doing the right thing, emotional intelligence, (self-awareness, awareness of others and effective communication) and doing this consistently. Like any skill, leadership is a learned behavior, a habit to form. Your leaders will role model your behaviour, be the standard you expect of others.

“Leadership is about empathy. It is the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.” Oprah Winfrey

CULTURE

Culture is directly related to performance and will determine the extent to which success or failure is achieved above almost all other business elements, culture is therefore the yin to the yang of traditional business levers. Culture in a business sense is hard to put your finger on. Sometimes felt as a feeling or gut instinct, we often refer to it as “fit” or “the way we do things around here”. Regardless, every organization has a culture either deliberate or accidental, and either positive or negative.

A common characteristic of poor culture is the inability of businesses to complete projects. Amazingly, this occurs in around 80% of businesses. Project managers are set up to fail because we can’t say no to opportunity or have no process around pipeline prioritisation. The reluctance of project owners to call when things are off track is due to fear of consequences. When intervention finally happens, the project is dead or in dire straits. “Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan” George Washington.

Does this sound like your business? Early intervention, personal accountability, and learning are key cultural characteristics of a high-performing team. A high-performing team is aligned with company values, purpose, and strategy. It is focused on a growth mindset of learning and continuous improvement. Our greatest learnings come from our greatest failures.

Business success is dependent on many variables, both tangible and intangible, but culture is perhaps the most underrated performance enhancement tool offering a sustainable competitive advantage. To improve your chances of success we can help develop a high-performing culture aligned with your core values.

VALUES

Getting clear on your organisation’s values is critical to developing the right culture for your organisation. If you’re not sure, a little introspection will help as your company’s values should match your own, if not then there is serious misalignment. It is common for workplaces with toxic behavior to have employees with values misalignment. This leads to covert destructive behavior, bullying, and high staff turnover, particularly when misalignment is at the leadership level. Core values help inform the identity and culture of your organisation and help your team make the right decisions. They should be a highly visible component within the business and in leadership behavior. Values-based recruitment selection will ensure a greater success rate for the right “fit” and employee performance conversations based on values alignment provide clarity and accountability.

We can help you uncover the values that fit your organisation and are aligned with your core purpose and vision. We’ll then help you embed these values into every aspect of your business.

ORGANISATIONAL DESIGN

An effective organisational design is essential for any business, large or small. It helps to ensure clear communication channels, well-defined roles and responsibilities, clarity of expectation, and a development/succession pathway for employees. Employee engagement survey’s constantly point to the lack of clarity employees have over their roles or even the absence of a simple position description. Employees generally want to know explicitly what is expected of them, how they are performing against expectations, and how they can improve or develop. How is it possible to have a meaningful appraisal or performance conversation with an employee if the basic role and agreed standards are not first agreed upon?

Whether hierarchical or flat, large or small, we can help you implement a design that will align your company objectives against processes, management, and organisational deliverables. If we can transform your organisation so that it is semi or fully managed then we have probably added 20% to 30% of company market value and reduced your stress levels by 50%.

Talk to us about how you can improve productivity, employee satisfaction, improve accountability and decision making and make your business scalable.