Organisational Culture Change

Our organisational culture change programmes are based on the premise that – along with basic business strategy – organisational culture is the single most important factor in determining the long term success of an organisation. This was first confirmed by Harvard Business School professors John Kotter and James Heskett in their groundbreaking book ‘Corporate Culture and Performance’.

Our consultancy services provide assistance in determining the type and quality of culture that will empower your organisation to gain the full engagement, alignment and commitment of your people to achieve the outcomes expressed in your organisation’s vision.

Healthy, high performance cultures have three components that inspire the engagement and alignment of its people.

  • An organisational vision expressing an aspirational purpose that your people can believe in and that makes their work meaningful to them.
  • A set of values that determine how your people will work and serve together within you organisation, with your clients and customers and with other stakeholders of your organisation.
  • Leaders at all levels within the organisation whose communication – and especially whose behaviour – are closely aligned with the above vision and values.

Organisational cultures have two components – one visible and the other non-visible. The visible part consists of the daily behaviour and workplace practices displayed by most management and staff; the non-visible component consists of the values (positive or negative) shared by most management and staff. Like a floating iceberg, the greater size and ‘weight’ of the culture is the non-visible values system – yet this is the underlying basis for the workplace practices and behaviour that are fully visible. Thus, in order to create a deep and permanent change in the visible culture of workplace practices and behaviour, the non-visible culture must shift or change. The result of this change process is a cultural transformation.

Our consultancy and training services can assist your organisation in achieving this in any of three ways:

  • We can undertake a cultural diagnostic to determine the current state of your culture – and provide a comprehensive analysis of the ideal culture that would foster achievement of your organisational objectives.
  • We can assist in the process of the designing of a vision and values statement around which you can build the desired culture that will strongly support your organisational objectives.
  • We can assist in designing and delivering experiential learning based training programmes to facilitate the transformation of the non-visible values system – and thus the visible practices and behaviour.