Employee engagement key to improving the bottom line
Recent research by online employment resource CareerOne shows job dissatisfaction levels are at a record high. CareerOne’s annual report, Hunting the (Hidden) …
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By Katie Cook, Client Director at Checkside
McKinsey research estimates that companies with high performance cultures can achieve up to three-times higher total returns to shareholders than those without[1]. Grant Thornton estimate that companies with extremely healthy cultures are 1.5 times more likely to report average revenue growth of more than 15% for the past three years[2].
With these types of outcomes, it is no surprise that a lot of attention is focused on driving high-performance culture, but how should you do this? The first step in answering this question is to clearly define what a high-performance culture entails.
Patrick Lencioni outlines the five key components of a high-performance culture as trust, constructive conflict, commitment, accountability and focus on results.
Trust
High-performance teams are founded on trust. Having a high level of trust in your organisation involves team members being open, being comfortable giving and receiving feedback and encouraging each other to admit mistakes and weaknesses.
Constructive Conflict
For innovation and creativity to be alive and encouraged in your organisation, team members need to be comfortable to engage with constructive conflict and debate.
Commitment
To effectively execute a strategy or deliver on an objective together, each member of the organisation needs to be committed to the same team goals and outcome.
Accountability
A culture of accountability means that team members are comfortable in holding each other to account for the commitments they have made. A part of this is having clearly communicated consequences for non-achievement of agreed outcomes – an area where many managers struggle.
Focus on Results
Results are the collective results of the organisation and the culture drives to focus on these, rather than just individual outcomes. At the end of the day, a high performing culture aligns to hard and measurable outcomes – it is not ‘soft’.
So as a business owner or leader how can you ensure that these five elements of a high-performance culture are integrated into the fabric of your organisation?
If you are not intentional about embedding a high-performance culture in your organisation, then some other, accidental culture will always develop as organisations never operate in a cultural vacuum. And if you have an accidental culture at play, you risk inferior behaviours becoming the norm and unexpected values being tolerated. This is often exacerbated by leaders delegating culture to managers who may be focused on engagement of people, but in the absence of the ‘harder’ / performance elements of working as a team.
So, your culture can either be intentional or accidental. You need to be deliberate and planned. And it is an ongoing process, not an event (your culture doesn’t revolve around a social function, or a new office layout).
We most commonly see the five elements of a high-performance culture in organisations that:
Nailing these elements creates a sustainable, winning culture and forms the key elements of a high-performance culture.
This (in and of itself) often leads to the culture being enjoyable. There are few successful sports teams for example, where the players don’t highlight the enjoyment and mateship that a high-performance culture creates.
If you want to reinforce an element of ‘fun’ (noting this means different things to different people) once you’ve embedded your high-performance framework , then an extra social event to celebrate team successes may help build deeper relationships. However, without bedding down the ‘harder’ elements first, you risk wasting time, effort and money. And at worst, you may be reinforcing an accidental culture that doesn’t get results and is difficult to unwind.
To learn more about creating a high-performance culture at your business, download our High-Performance Framework (using the button below) or call us to find out more…
download our High Performance Framework here