What is Organizational Culture and Why does it matter?
In an era of rapid change, complex challenges and competition, the need to ensure cultural alignmentand develop cultures that can adapt to internal and external forces, has become an imperative mandate towards enabling change that is Sustainableto drive Performance and enable Competitive advantage.
“… culture is the most potent and hard-to-replicate source of competitive advantage – far more than … technological innovation” - James Heskett
Organizational culture, commonly defined as “the way we do things around here”, develops with or without conscious effortto become the DNA of every organization … and can either be a corporate asset or a liability. Organizational culture is highly observable but can easily be misinterpreted and lead to unpredictable employee performanceunless the critical factors that drive employee behaviours are fully understood.
We can help your organization to conduct a ‘quantitative and qualitative’ analysis of the causal factors that drive employee behaviours and identify the levers-of-change to impact individual performance, their impact on groups and the organization as a whole. We use scientifically proven instruments developed by Human Synergistics that have helped global Institutions across every industry to understand and bring about transformational change to improve and sustain the performance for the past 40 years. Contact us today to know more about how we can help.
Organisations expend substantial efforts and resources developing strategies, they have restructured, downsized, merged, benchmarked, or re-engineered their processes and yet the evidence shows that:
• More than 85% of organizations fail to execute their strategy effectively
• More than 70% of all change initiatives fail to deliver the expected results
• More than 50% of M&A deals fail
• Organizations with a positive organizational culture are 11 times more likely to attract and retainessential employees.
• Employee engagement has reached some of the lowest levelse.g., less than 50% in the GCC regions
… with corporate culture identified as one of the primary contributing factors!
Extensive research by thought leaders and independent institutions demonstrate a direct relationship between company culture and business performance. One of the most well known research was conducted by Harvard professors John Kotter and James Heskett in which, they studied more than 200 organizations in 22 industries over an 11 year period, to compare the performance of organizations thatconsidered corporate culture as a key aspect of their strategy and those that did not. The difference was both astonishing and significant. They discovered that for companies that focus on company culture:
- Revenues increased - 4 times faster
- Job creation rates grew - 7 times higher
- Stock prices increased - 12 times faster
- Profits climbed - 750% higher
- Net income grew - 700%
- Customer satisfaction-Doubled
James Heskett found that as much as half of the difference in operating profit between organisations can be attributed to effective cultures, primarily due to improved talent acquisition and retention which, results in productivity gains, improved customer relationships and loyalty.
Unfortunately the cultural implications of many organizational-wide change efforts are frequently underestimated because most of the focus is on process and policy changes. Even when leaders are aware of the importance of culture, many often attempt to bring about cultural change using a top-down approach aimed at influencing behaviors and practices. These efforts often fail because they attempt to address the effects of culture without understanding, identifying and/or addressing the underlying causes.
Aculture that is aligned with the company’s mission, values and strategy can generate real ENERGY and MOMENTUM, required to achieve optimal performance, successfully enable and sustain change, increase employee engagement, improve sales and increase customer loyalty, enable innovation, improve and sustain operational efficiency and profitability.
On the other hand, a misaligned culture can become an overwhelming obstacle to change and improvements – amplifying deep-seated but counterproductive beliefs and behaviours that are not consistent with the company’s current or future interests. In order to create sustainable behavioral change needed to achieve strategic goals, leaders must examine the culture within their organisations at the deepest levels and identify which traits are acting as barriers and which ones can be used to accelerate and sustain change.
We can help your organization with obtaining this deep understanding using a suite of instruments that are scientifically proven, independently validated, researched and developed over a period of 40 years. Global Institutions across every industry have benefited from using the instruments to understand and bring about transformational change in individuals, groups, managers and leaders to improve and sustain the performance of the organization as a whole. Contact us today to know more about how we can help.
“culture isn’t simply one aspect of the game… it is the game” –Lou Gerstner (ex-CEO of IBM) says in his book - Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance
Moyez Kassam is a co-founder and Managing Director of 21st Century Consulting. Moyez is an accomplished OD and management consultant with over 30 years of diverse international experience in developingand implementing innovative, strategic and transformational change initiatives that align,develop and leverage ‘Human Capital’ for business performance. Moyez is highly motivated by challenges that involve transformational-change initiatives that enable positive impact to individuals, organizations and communities as a whole. 
George is a highly successful entrepreneur in the publishing, advertising, marketing and research industry throughout the Arabian Gulf region since 1979. In 1991, he founded Red House Marketing (RHM), which is currently one of the most successful independent publishing, marketing and research organizations in the Kingdom of Bahrain
Janet has extensive experience as an Executive, managing and leading organisational effectiveness and change across a number of diverse cultures and territories, including UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
CEO at Zwell International
Leena is a social entrepreneur as co-founder and Managing Director of 3BL ‘Triple Bottom Line’ Associates: a strategy consultancy and think-do-tank that is working to reimagine a more sustainable Middle East. She is the first consulting affiliate in the Arab world of Prof. Michael Porter’s ‘Shared Value’ Initiative. Leena also serves as the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) Quality Control Consultant for Sustainability Reporting Training Partners in the MENA region. Leena has around 15 years of professional multi-disciplinary experience developing innovative social impact, sustainability and communications strategies for private, public, civil society sectors and international organizations in the GCC and New York.