She discusses the definition of culture as being ‘the glue that holds our organizations together. It encompasses beliefs, norms, rituals, communication patterns, symbols, heroes and reward structures’. The important question is whether you’re using your culture purposefully to enhance your chance for success. Her book offers a process to create a values blueprint and she breaks that journey down starting with surveys to identify the current state of culture and the effectiveness of systems you already have in place. She then moves on to look at how to set up a ‘Values Blueprint workshops’ and offers a range of practical templates in her ‘leaders toolbox’ section. When culture change is imposed from the top it is likely to be meaningless to the vast majority of your employees. If you build company wide agreement on the values and behaviours you want to share, you’ll build a strong foundation for culture change and performance will be hard for competitors to shake. You’ll also attract and retain employees for whom those agreed upon values are the foundation for sometimes astonishing behaviour. Some of the questions in her process include:
Do employees live our company’s stated values? Do those values represent what we are today? Are the meanings of the values clear? Do our leaders support the values? Do our current values drive decisions made in our organisation? Has our organisation assigned specific behaviours to the values? Are our values integrated in to the hiring, review, and reward process?
How would you currently answer these questions?
Author: Andy Partridge About Author: A specialist in motivation and building self-confidence, Andy’s energetic, charismatic and dynamic style makes him one of the most sought after trainers within the UK Recruitment Industry. He is enthusiastic and passionate about helping people to reach their full potential, focusing on techniques to increase both control and confidence. He believes that the more people feel a sense of being in control and experience the power of ‘choice’, the more confidence they exude. As well as instructional recruitment training, Andy has built a reputation on being able to inspire and motivate, believing that one of the vital ingredients to achieving success is a desire to improve and progress. His Motivation for Success material is designed to help individuals
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