“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”
Peter Drucker’s quote is scary to say the least. Some, after reading it, will certainly think about deleting their calendars and uninstalling their Trello. Others will choose to discredit that culture is so strong.
The fact is, thinking about businesses that had everything to work, but didn’t take off, merely due to the erroneous execution of their strategic plans, is a homework.
According to the IBGE, Brazil closes more companies than it opens. A data reported by the Business Demographics and Entrepreneurship Statistics says that 21% of companies break down after the first year of activity.
What makes so many companies close down?
One of those responsible for closing down the company is the employee himself. However, it is not just his fault. Disengagement is the determining factor caused mainly by discouragement and lack of boosting human capital within the company, both caused by the absence of an organizational culture.
Organizational culture is extremely important for the success and overall health of your company, your employees and your customers. Therefore, it is useful to spend time considering why your company’s culture is the way it is and why it is important to stay the same (or change).
People connect with people
More than slides and fridges full of soft drinks of all kinds, organizations need to think about transparency, virtue and integrity.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that employees who feel part of a community, rather than a cog in a wheel, are more likely to stay with your company. In fact, this is what most job seekers look for in a place to work.
When you ask any high-performance professional what keeps him in your company, you will possibly hear this answer: people. It is because a work culture focused on people has a deep appeal. It helps to improve engagement, offers employees a unique experience and makes people feel more connected.
One way to attract the best professionals who are natural culture champions is to hire adaptable people.
But how do you create a company that employees love?
There have been similar studies before – often linked to engagement and productivity, and including those that insist that wages have little to do with happiness, that some scholars have resorted to – and have fled the realm of reality. But something is changing about the nature of how we work today.
When we see the best companies to work for, surveys that are conducted by Great Place to Work, companies that have people as the center of everything are the best placed.
And here’s a list of everything they do differently:
They put people first;
They help employees to find and follow their passions;
Put together effective teams through a diversity of ideas;
They empower people in what they do best;
They create spaces where people can be themselves.
When we ask leaders only to do their duties and be an instrument inside a money-making machine, we are asking them to do very little and giving them the opportunity to avoid difficult questions about what is most important in life.
We can be much more direct by insisting that coordinators and leaders foster human potential and support human flourishing as obligations of their roles. If we don’t have deeper goals for our business, then who and what do we go through all these problems for?
