In its simplest form, people power organizational profit. People deliver results, and those results drive success.
The values and culture of an organization 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 organizational values, which reflect the behaviors one can expect and the approach to business within the organization.
Establishing the “right” vision for an organization 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 behavior. It’s no surprise that we fail to understand why employees are not aligned with these values, do not exhibit the desired behaviors, and fail to perform as expected.
Clarity around values is critical to fostering an organizational culture that drives performance and profitability. High-performing organizations define their values clearly and link them to coherent, observable behaviors that shape the culture. Typically, an organization has two cultural dimensions:
- Actual culture: The current state of the organization.
- Preferred culture: The ideal state that embodies the organization’s aspirations and aligns with its strategic goals.
Preferred culture serves as a guiding framework for the behaviors and values necessary to execute the organizational strategy effectively. This culture and its values define the organization and provide a sense of meaning to its employees. Meaning fosters ownership—of jobs, relationships, teams, and the organization 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 organizational culture and values, is ineffective. Values and culture create the context for required job behaviors, enabling organizations to align competencies with their overarching goals.
Competency profiles should be job-specific while remaining aligned with the organization’s values and culture. This ensures that job behaviors reflect the organizational ethos and contribute to its strategic objectives.
Organizations can achieve sustainable behavioral change through a four-step process:
- Define: Identify the preferred culture and the values that will drive the organizational strategy. Define organizational and job-specific competencies that align with these values.
- Differentiate: Evaluate individuals to determine the alignment between their behaviors and the organization’s objectives.
- Develop: Address gaps identified in the differentiation phase through targeted training and development at individual and organizational 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 organizational 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 organizations.
