One of the comments I often receive during my trainings for organisations is always centred around the effects of culture on strategy. The importance of culture of empathy and resilience is obvious with the pandemic. An organisation without resilience and empathy will not maximise the potency of its strategy in a turbulent time like COVID-19. Thus, culture eats strategy in changing and unpredictable business environment. Where there is a conflict between culture and strategy, the culture dominates.
The responsibility for the defining of the culture of any organisation is that of the Board of directors. The executive management is to implement the board’s decisions. Where there are culture deficiencies, the management must have either misinterpreted the culture or implemented it as favourable to them and not likely work in the interest of the company for the long term. One of the reasons management subverts culture is for short term personal gains and recognitions. Institutions likes Twinnings, Tabasco and Jim Beam that are over 100years old must have had a synergy of culture as crafted by their founders and as implementation by the management teams over the years. The likes of Safaricom in Kenya and Nandos in South Africa must have had a positive correlation of culture and strategy to emerge among the top-most innovative companies.
Where there are negative correlations or huge culture gaps, the integrity of the executive management is at stake. As I did mention to the twelve thousand teachers I spoke to at the Lagos Teachers’ Conference last week, anyone who failed to develop the competence required to do what he or she is being paid to do lacks integrity. Culture audit is, therefore, one of the ways for the executive management to gauge its competence integrity to the board except where the written culture is a mirage. Where the envisaged culture is a mirage; the core values will never be the way of life.
Aside from the source of information for the audit of a culture, the avenue of getting the information is also important. Culture audit failed to achieve its purpose where people who execute it are theoreticians. A foreign firm might write good proposals on culture audit and use questionnaires, but it takes external personnel with the knowledge of the industry and the company auditing its culture to connect with the staff and extract information on the ways of life at the workplace. One of the best ways to obtain information on the manifested culture from employees is by asking a set of probing questions, which cannot come from someone without the experience of similar culture and the knowledge of the industry’s peculiarities.
Below are four of the requirements for a successful culture audit for organisations aspiring to transform into institutions.
This first bastion is candour. A management team that cannot accept open and sincere feedback will make a mess of the essence of any culture audit. One of the ways to know a culture with a conscious bias against candour is if the leaders of the team at strategy or culture alignment meetings give assurance or grant amnesty to staff to speak their minds ahead of comments or response session. This is an indicator that people can easily become anathema for being sincere in their feedback and comments.
The second requirement for a successful culture audit is sincerity of purpose. This is the level of desire to weeding out the unintended behaviours in the workplace. It is not enough to harvest honest suggestions or feedbacks. The management must be willing to take the difficult decisions for the long-term interest of the organization.
Another requirement for an effective alignment of culture with strategy is the avoidance of ‘grade-range’. Grade-range is a shielding behaviour where offenders get away unpunished because they are either above or on the same grade with the custodian of the culture. The offences are often settled at the close door meetings where the staff of lower grades who have been offended are not privileged to attend or even get exited. The grade-range culture encourages impunity and executive high handedness with grave consequences on the company’s brand.
To avoid grade-range a senior and non-compromising staff should be the custodian of the culture. In most organisations, human resources are perceived as the owners of the culture but experience showed this role as a relegated option to recruitment, promotions, and processing of documents. It is, therefore, desirable for companies who are serious about their middle-level employees to empower a department possibly the compliance team for effective monitoring of the culture and core value violations and report to the Board of directors directly.
Since most people will end their career at the middle level in the organisation, a culture that treats the majority of the workforce fairly will encourage ownership thinking and result-oriented atmosphere. It will reduce attrition and disengagement rate among the staff and ensure a better exit where necessary.
The test of the effectiveness of a company’s written values and the manifested culture is in the ways staff exits are being managed and the level of ambassadorial commitment of the ex-staff to the company. Hence, culture is a key factor for organisational sustainability and is a measure of the integrity of the management.
