In its simplest form, people power organisational profit. People deliver results, and those results drive success.
The values and culture of an organisation are the collective behaviors that define it. Leadership plays a pivotal role in shaping this culture, as people tend to emulate the behaviors demonstrated by their leaders. Consequently, leadership style sets the tone for organisational values, which reflect the behaviours one can expect and the approach to business within the organisation.
Establishing the “right” vision for an organisation is often treated as a quirky, superficial exercise. This is followed by posting a list of values in hallways, as though that alone will dictate employee behaviour. It’s no surprise that we fail to understand why employees are not aligned with these values, do not exhibit the desired behaviours, and fail to perform as expected.
Clarity around values is critical to fostering an organisational culture that drives performance and profitability. High-performing organisations define their values clearly and link them to coherent, observable behaviors that shape the culture. Typically, an organisation has two cultural dimensions:
- Actual culture: The current state of the organisation.
- Preferred culture: The ideal state that embodies the organisation’s aspirations and aligns with its strategic goals.
Preferred culture serves as a guiding framework for the behaviours and values necessary to execute the organisational strategy effectively. This culture and its values define the organisation and provide a sense of meaning to its employees. Meaning fosters ownership—of jobs, relationships, teams, and the organisation as a whole.
Once values are defined and culture established, the next step is to align work-specific roles and deliverables—commonly referred to as competencies—through job profiling and competency profiling. However, job profiling in isolation, disconnected from organisational culture and values, is ineffective. Values and culture create the context for required job behaviours, enabling organisations to align competencies with their overarching goals.
Competency profiles should be job-specific while remaining aligned with the organisation’s values and culture. This ensures that job behaviours reflect the organisational ethos and contribute to its strategic objectives.
Organisations can achieve sustainable behavioral change through a four-step process:
- Define: Identify the preferred culture and the values that will drive the organisational strategy. Define organisational and job-specific competencies that align with these values.
- Differentiate: Evaluate individuals to determine the alignment between their behaviours and the organization’s objectives.
- Develop: Address gaps identified in the differentiation phase through targeted training and development at individual and organisational levels.
- Demonstrate: Measure the success of the interventions by assessing their return on investment and ability to predict performance, proficiency, promotability, and potential in recruitment, selection, and development processes.
This article is the first in a series of four that will explore the role of performance frameworks in driving organisational success. It highlights the importance of culture and values in shaping behaviors and fostering alignment. The next article will focus on applying and implementing competencies within organisations.
