The strategic power of culture alignment (and why top-down often fails)

All organisations have cultures—"the way we do things around here." Cultures both shape strategy and are shaped by them. Successful organisations have cultures that actively support the delivery of their strategies.

Some leadership teams attempt to change culture by simply developing new values and cascading these through the organisation. This rarely works unless every other element is aligned to support the change. I’ve seen executive teams spend hours word smithing values, which are then delivered to employees via expensive videos and slide decks. What is often missed is that the leaders’ actions are communicating much louder than the words, and are saying something different.

The loudest messages are unspoken

The behaviours we exhibit, what we recognise and reward, who is promoted, and who is retained (despite their behaviours being in direct conflict with stated values) says far more than words on a poster. It is these unspoken messages that colleagues hear loudly and believe implicitly. Through my career, I have seen so many powerful examples of this disconnect:

• Leadership programme: A major leadership programme was run to change leadership behaviours, but the senior team didn't participate (because, they felt it was everyone else who needed to change). This led to participants concluding that the senior team's existing, unaddressed behaviour was what was truly rewarded.  The participants used what they had learnt from the programme in their personal lives but not at work.

• Health and safety: At a senior leadership event, the executive team stressed the importance of improving health and safety across the organisation, only to then step on and off the stage failing to use the steps provided for safety reasons.  As a consequence nobody in the audience took their message seriously.

• Entertainment issue: at one organisation I helped design a leadership event focused on the need for cultural change.  The key message for leaders was the need to build a more respectful, inclusive culture. After a day of serious work exploring the required changes, one of the executive leaders ran an evening entertainment that was both disrespectful (shaming individuals) and misogynistic. Many leaders at the event complained, but the executive team failed to take their complaints seriously - they didn't see any conflict between the messages about the need for cultural change and the inappropriate entertainment.

  
  

Four pillars for cultural change

Having led culture change programmes, my key learnings are:

1. The median is the message: What you do is much more important than what you say. Leaders’ actions must consistently embody the desired change.

2. Consistency is key: You must align your leadership behaviour, development interventions, business processes, and reward structures with the culture you are wanting to create.

3. Honour the present: People need to be able to relate to the future culture from where they are today. Any change must honour and bring forward what colleagues currently value whilst establishing new norms.

4. Perseverance: Cultural change takes time and sustained focus. Often, the leaders who start culture change programmes move on before the changes are fully embedded, leading to insufficient organisational momentum to see it through.

Your sphere of influence: creating a sub-climate

As a leader - whether part of a larger executive team or leading your own department - it can feel hard to influence the culture, but you absolutely can.

Think of the culture as a weather climate. As an individual, you cannot change whether the climate is tropical or arctic, but you can shelter your team and create a space that protects them from the adverse weather, like putting up a large umbrella in the rain.

Leaders directly affect the experience of colleagues in their area of responsibility. By being intentional about how they show up, they can create sub-climates of culture that are more engaging and empowering than what might be prevalent in the wider organisation. Courageous leaders listen to colleagues, are honest and upfront, and try to align their team's experience with the articulated culture, empowering their people to deliver on the strategy.

How intentional are you in creating the climate for your team and influencing the overall culture? Do your behaviours and actions always align with this intention? We can help you be both more intentional and more consistent in creating the climate you want your team to experience.