Having worked in a variety of organizations and industries, I’ve come to appreciate how much organizational culture can influence the workplace. In particular, organizational culture is a reflection of its leadership and so therefore are linked. Culture shapes the behaviors of its workforce by defining what is encouraged and discouraged. Organizational culture is usually shared, pervasive, and enduring (Groysberg, et al, 2024). Organizational culture is primarily driven by its leadership and in turn, will tend to have an impact on its workforce. As I address this important organizational concept I’d like to address it by also answering the following two questions.
- How do you think organizational culture influences the implementation of effective business strategies, and what changes do you anticipate in your role within companies by 2025?
- In a dynamic and globalized business environment, what key practices should leaders adopt to strengthen organizational culture and align it with long-term strategic goals?
To begin to address these questions I’d like to begin with the below framework that highlights what I believe are the key components of organizations. We know organizations exist to provide a service or product. However, the environment of these organizations play a key role in their success.
Source: Edwin Mourino-Ruiz, Ph.D.
- How do you think organizational culture influences the implementation of effective business strategies, and what changes do you anticipate in your role within companies by 2025?
Since organizations compete with others in their industry on the service or product they provide, most usually create a strategy on how to achieve their deliverables and milestones. The first key structure needed to achieve its deliverables is its organizational strategy. This provides the organization with the direction and focus they will need to achieve their deliverables.
Once the organizational strategy is in place they ensure their organizational operations are designed in a way to support the strategy and to deliver on their products or services. Their operations infrastructure consists of how they deliver their products and services. This is how they deliver on why they exist and their value-add.
The last component is their financial management. This is where they track how they are doing financially as an organization and provide management with information on their viability. It provides management an opportunity to assess if they have to adapt, cut back, or expand. It lets them know what to do next depending on what the numbers are saying.
In essence, this top portion represents “the what” of an organization, why it exists, and how it plans to operate and grow based on the services and products it provides. It represents why the organization exists and the intended value-add to their potential clients. However, this top portion is not enough for an organization to succeed. After all, an organization is not complete without its workforce to provide the value that it ascribes to do. This is where the bottom portion plays a significant role.
The bottom portion consists of the human dynamics within the organization. It consists of the psychology of its workforce. This is about what is expected from the individuals in the organization and how they may feel engaged in the workplace. Organizational dynamics is about how teams, departments, and team members interact with each other. This is also about how managers interact with their teams and the expectations they set for their team members. It is also about how department leaders’ model what they expect from their teams. It is about the sociological aspects of departments and teams. In a way, it is about the behavioral expectations within and among departments.
The last portion is the organizational culture. This is about what is expected in the organization from its team members and leaders. It is about the unwritten rules of how the workforce is expected to engage in the organization while performing their duties and interacting with each other and their clients that everyone understands. This bottom portion and in particular the organizational culture can enable or hinder organizational strategy. Another way it has been stated many times is that “culture eats strategy for lunch” and some give credit (true or not) to Peter Drucker who some consider one of the key contributors to management thinking.
Below this and what I believe is the foundation to all of this framework and in turn organizational success is effective leadership. It is at the bottom of this framework that the foundation holds everything together. Without effective leadership more times than not leads to toxic workplaces and organizations not achieving their objectives. How leaders treat their workers can lead to how their workers treat their customers.
Another way I like to describe the framework is that the top portion highlights the hardware of the organization, while the bottom portion highlights the software. And like a computer, without its software a computer is just a piece of plastic, metal, or a box. An organization without its organizational behavior or differentiator, effective leadership, and organizational culture can make the top portion of the organization short-sighted, short-lived, and/or possibly unsuccessful.
I see my role as an external consultant to help the organizations and their leadership help themselves. To provide the leadership with an external objective perspective as they work to create a healthy organizational culture. In my role, I provide insights based on what research is telling us drives success and serve as a mirror for leadership to reflect on the implications of the changing workforce expectations and how they may or may not be meeting these changes. To meet them where they are and help them move forward. I’ve also learned that this research is usually supported by personal experiences of those I work with.
Those in a leadership role need to accept that they own, drive, and create the organizational culture that will set up the organization for success as it pursues its organizational strategy and objectives. As I have mentioned to leaders, when they stepped into their role, they may not have realized that they were stepping into a celebrity role, because the spotlight is always on them. Everyone on their team is watching what they say and do and if they align.
Some comprehensive considerations for organizations are to:
- assess their workforce as to how they feel about their workplace and leaders
- provide leadership development
- ensure accountability and reward mechanisms are in sync
- communicate throughout the organizations the expectations of their organizational culture.
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- Human Intelligent Workplace Questionniare
- Leadership Behavior Effectiveness (LBE) Questionnaire
- Organizational Change Readiness Questionnaire
Contact us at hi@humanintelligentworplace.com to discuss how we can help your leaders help themselves.
- In a dynamic and globalized business environment, what key practices should leaders adopt to strengthen organizational culture and align it with long-term strategic goals?
Allowing an unhealthy or toxic workplace to exist by not paying attention to the bottom portion of the framework can lead to an organization’s ineffectiveness and even downfall. There are too many organizations in the cemetery of past successful organizations. It is because of this that I believe that a healthy organization will prioritize the bottom portion of the framework through effective leadership to enable a positive organizational differentiator.
Today there is an increasing emphasis on humans in the workplace. Part of this is because increasingly today’s workforce is looking for purpose (doing something bigger than them), autonomy (not wanting to be micro-managed), mastery (wanting to always be learning), happiness, a feeling of belonging, being engaged, feeling psychologically safe, and being listened to by their leaders. I believe this can be enabled by creating a Human Intelligent (HI) Workplace.
An HI workplace is one where leaders model effective leadership behaviors by creating an organizational culture where the workers’ experience is one of being engaged while collaborating with their diverse team members. It is a workplace where the workforce feels psychologically safe when raising different perspectives, taking risks, being innovative, and/or being creative. It is a workplace where the workforce feels listened to and understood by their leaders. It is a workplace where the workforce finds fulfillment in the work they do and, in the organization, they work in.
For organizations to position themselves for success going forward, where the workforce has different expectations, they are going to have to reassess their priorities. Leaders will need to balance organizational effectiveness with organizational behavior/differentiator through a more human-focused approach via their organizational culture. Organizations will need to create a healthy organizational culture by enabling a human-intelligent workplace through effective leadership.
Leaders will need to ensure they are creating a human-intelligent workplace through its organizational culture. They will need to do this by ensuring they are assessing how:
- well they are performing. Not just by achieving organizational objectives but by assessing how the workers feel about their effectiveness as leaders.
- the workforce feels about the organizational culture and if they are engaged.
- and if their workers believe there is a collaborative workplace environment.
- psychologically safe does the workforce feel in the organization.
- and if the workers feel listened to by their management.
In addition to the above, they will need to assess how and for what behaviors are leaders being held accountable and rewarded. Is their mindset one of “my way or the highway” or one of creating a collaborative, learning, and engaged workplace experience? Those in management that practice good or bad behaviors have a reputation and brand and most in the organization are aware of them, hence their celebrity role. They in turn create an organizational culture or sub-culture.
Organizations and their leaders should assess the above and reflect while asking themselves the following questions:
- How is your organization doing in this space?
- Is it really a human-focused organization?
- Is it a human-intelligent workplace?
- Are leaders effective?
- How do you know?
Some comprehensive considerations for organizations are to:
- assess their workforce as to how they feel about their workplace and leaders
- provide leadership development
- ensure accountability and reward mechanisms are in sync
- communicate throughout the organizations the expectations of their organizational culture.
In essence to take a systemic approach to cultural alignment.
In summary, I end where I began. Organizational culture is primarily driven by its leadership and in turn, will tend to have an impact on its workforce which in turn will impact its workplace and deliverables. Organizational culture is a reflection of its leadership and so therefore are linked. If the bottom portion of the framework is weak the above will eventually slow down and may even collapse. As I read many years ago, an executive was looking out his window at the end of the workday watching his workforce leave for their homes. He reflected and realized his most expensive resource and investment was leaving for the day. Mr or Ms leader, something else for you to reflect on.
Sources:
Groysberg, B., Lee, J., Price, J., & Cheng, Y., 2024. The leader’s guide to corporate culture. Harvard Business Review, Winter 2024.
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