Last week, we continued our journey through the components necessary for growing your desired culture and focused on Defining and Growing Your Culture. Today, we continue with Structural Alignment. Aligning strategy, structure, and culture is imperative for success in cultural transformation.
- Organization-wide values-awareness programs should be established and maintained.
- Reinforcement materials—including videos, pamphlets, and posters—should be provided.
- A values-based coaching program and coaching culture should be implemented and cultivated.
- The company brand and/or customer promise statement need to be aligned with your desired culture.
You must consistently work on culture with various parts of the organization—including HR, communications, and strategy—in addition to the top leadership team. Collaborating on culture is extremely important and easily missed.
You need to ensure that the structures and systems of your culture and the communications about it are aligned.
Structures, policies, procedures, and incentives reflect the value systems of the current leaders and the institutional legacy of past leaders. They dictate what behaviors are acceptable and encouraged and what behaviors are unacceptable and discouraged.
The following are examples of some of the most important policies, procedures, and programs that should reflect the organization’s espoused values:
- Decision-making processes should be values-based because they allow us to break with the past and create a new future based on what is important to us individually and as an organization.
- HR processes and structures need to be consciously aligned with the wanted culture. This includes employee selection, evaluation, and development.
- Leadership development and management training programs should include training and reflection on values, culture, and wanted behaviors.
In 2017, Ashley Munday, Former Director of Thrive by SweetRush, and Tor Eneroth, Director of Cultural Transformation at Barrett Values Centre, wrote an eBook as a resource and workbook for leaders to get started on the culture journey in a meaningful and tactical way. To accommodate as many leaders as possible, we have converted the content into a series of articles that can be read piece by piece and will be publishing them on a weekly basis. We invite you to consume the material at your own pace and welcome your feedback and questions along the way. Thrive by SweetRush is now known as Transforming Leaders and Culture (TLC) by SweetRush. Please reach out to begin transforming your organization today!
If you’re reading this series, we know you are a leader who understands and cares about the way your organization’s culture supports its people and its purpose—for that, we thank you! Check out the other articles in this series:
- Culture Change in Organizations Begins Within
- Organizational Culture Transformation—A Journey, Not a Destination
- Culture Change Case Study: Volvo IT
- Changing Corporate Culture Case Study: Old Mutual Group
- Cultural Change In Organizations Example: Unilever Brazil
- Key Learnings in Culture Transformation
- Growing Your Desired Culture: Leadership Commitment
- Growing Your Desired Culture: Roles for Supporting Culture
- Growing Your Desired Culture: Defining and Growing Your Culture
- Growing Your Desired Culture: Structural Alignment
- Growing Your Desired Culture: Follow-Up and Learning
