Building A Framework For Cultural Transformation

Margaret “Magi” Graziano is founder/CEO of KeenAlignment and author of “Ignite Culture” on leading healthy, high-performance organizations.

According to McKinsey research, 70% of transformations fail — and 70% of those failures come down to culture-related issues! Before you, the CEO, can start building a change framework for cultural transformation throughout your organization, your entire executive team must be willing to do their own foundational work. Everyone on the leadership team needs ongoing personal and professional training and support in a variety of areas to facilitate sustainable change.

You and your leadership team are the heart of your organization, and the heart needs to be in top condition to pump blood into the whole organization. Stamina is not optional; it’s key to your success. Do the personal work as CEO, and then go through a deep alignment process as an executive team.

The first time a promise is broken, trust is broken — and without trust, it’s nearly impossible to sustain meaningful change. It’s important to begin your alignment journey by first grappling with the discomfort of discussing where there is mistrust. You will need to work hard to mitigate VUCA — volatility, uncertainty, chaos and ambiguity — among yourselves first. Only then are you and your team ready to move into the next phase.

Once you and your team are deeply aligned, you’re ready to create a compelling future for your organization. A compelling future starts with a noble cause, a powerful mission and a strong set of core values that are easy for both management and employees to operationalize.

Remember, your mission matters.

In my experience, you can’t have a high-performance organizational culture without a noble cause. Once you define and articulate the organization’s overarching intent, it’s time to define its mission — what the organization does, day in and day out, to fulfill that overarching intent.

Your mission should capture how the company’s core competencies make a positive impact in the world. This is what attracts the right talent to your company and encourages them to stay and fully contribute. In today’s competitive talent market, a compelling noble cause and a mission that speaks to what you do and how you do it is very important.

For example, my company’s noble cause is to “forever liberate the human spirit at work.” It’s simple but powerful. It captures people’s attention, attracting both clients and talent. We have integrated this mission into everything we do — from writing job descriptions to onboarding to creating and delivering services as well as managing and leading. In my experience, committing to and leading in alignment with an inspiring noble cause is one of the most powerful forces for sustainable change.

Values speak volumes — so craft them carefully.

At successful companies, values — and the day-to-day behaviors that bring them to life — are highly respected. Hires, terminations and promotions are based on an employee’s alignment with the organization’s values. Well-crafted values are purposeful, meaningful and evocative. They complement the company’s mission and shape positive behavior.

Values are ineffective when they are only aspirational. Make sure your values articulate the company’s actual inspiring behavior in its current state. Values build trust both within an organization and with the organization’s customers and partners.

When a company has clear values, it can mitigate VUCA because those values tell and show everyone in the company what’s important and everyone in the world what to expect from the people who represent this company. Organization-wide commitment to a core set of values ensures that everyone works in respect and service of the same set of inspiring and aligned behaviors.

Identify your strategic anchors to promote alignment.

In his bestselling business classic, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, leadership guru Patrick Lencioni discusses “strategic anchors.” He describes a simple, game-changing process for companies to answer the question, “How will we succeed?”

Companies that use strategic anchors can have a clear competitive advantage. Lencioni uses Southwest Airlines’ as an example: Their strategic anchors — on time, low fares and fun customer experience — are a distillation of the company’s core values down to their very essence.

To achieve organizational health, you and your executive team must answer the question “How will we succeed?” by identifying your own strategic anchors. Then, when an opportunity comes along, you can quickly assess whether it aligns with or compromises those strategic anchors. If even one of the strategic anchors is negatively impacted by the opportunity, I suggest the executive team take a pass. This is what decision-making looks like in a healthy, high-performing and sustainable organization. Simple, right? And so liberating!

Support the human spirit.

I’ve found change is simply not possible when people are stuck in hopelessness, fear and frustration. As a group, you must be willing to address and eliminate entrenched, unhealthy behaviors and dynamics, and make the necessary effort to build trust.

Learn about each other and commit to a new, healthier way of thinking and behaving. If this work is done, the environment can shift from antagonistic and threatening to collaborative and respectful — the ideal setting for sustainable change.

There are no shortcuts to creating this setting within your organization. Once you begin to move people toward courage, engagement, innovation and beyond, then — and only then — you are ready to build a framework for transformative, sustainable change.

Check out original article in the Forbes Website here.

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