A business transformation guru once said: “Culture drives expectations and beliefs. Expectation and beliefs drive behaviour. Behaviour drives habits. Habits create the future.”

Culture is the reason why great organisation’s have sustained success. Look at Apple or Toyota, or any other special company, each has a unique culture of consistent excellence in everything they do.

A company without culture is like a team with members who are strange to one another. You want to achieve the same goal, but you don’t know the values, habits, and behaviour as well as the skills and competence of your colleagues. The result is playing hard individually and not passing the ball to optimize the team synergies to increase the chances of winning the game. Business is a game that calls for a team effort.

Culture is not what is said. It is what is done. When it comes to culture, actions speak louder than words.

Corporate culture is shaped by three things.

1. Believes and values
2. Behaviours and habits
3. The way of doing things – the unwritten code of conduct that leads to consistent practice – the way we do things here.

Culture is defined as “the way we do things here.” The specific behaviour and habits applied over a long period form a certain way of doing things that is unique and difficult to copy. Culture is a result of predominant values, beliefs and behaviour that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organisation. A strong positive culture leads to high performance. A strong toxic culture leads to corporate failure.

Why a culture audit?

1. A culture audit helps determine the values, beliefs, and practices that are dominant in the organisation – particularly when you start to focus on encouraging innovation, winning attitude, agility and implementing change initiatives for improved performance. However, it can be hard to clarify which values and sub-cultures are strongest without a culture audit.
2. A culture audit helps to identify the predominant culture type – the desired culture type to find ways to win. Is your current culture toxic or productive? You cannot improve something that you do not know. A culture audit is a sign of great leadership for their willingness to transform the organization through identifying the ideal culture.
3. Not money, Not machinery, Not buildings. The single most critical resource that separates great companies from average ones is the staff working as a team focused on a common agenda.
4. A company may have a well-documented strategy, work plans, and budgets, but if the prevailing culture is that of individualism, sluggishness, laid back attitude, victim mentality, no great results may be attained. In addition to specific and clear KPIs for each staff, a high-performance culture drives result.

The fact is a culture of performance takes time. It calls for sacrifice and change in how things are done. For that reason, some people must change to new ways and habits to align to the predominant winning culture given the dynamic business environment. Some staff, unfortunately, may fight new interventions and tools. That is expected in any change initiative.

To grow, one must be willing to let go! When one is promoted to a new senior role, they must change by letting go of their previous role.

The results of these tools shall help reveal who is on your team and whether they have the passion and the right attitude to grow in these changing times.

The summitCULTURE audit approach

We have summarized the culture audit process to avoid surprises. We want each one of you to be on the same page. You are all expected to be responsive by making time for this assignment, whenever requested. To respond to all questionnaires and requests for meetings in time.

Our ACT approach shall guide this culture audit engagement.

Assess –understand your current culture through inception meeting, document reviews, and questionnaire to be filled by all staff,

 Change – issue a series of questionnaires, hold confidential discussions with staff to further understand the prevailing culture and co-define the desired culture for effective behaviours to improve staff morale, productivity, and right attitude by creating habits that drive performance and,

 Transform – where we provide ongoing support to the select managers to ensure the objectives called for under this assignment are achieved.

This assignment shall benefit all staff, as it helps align individual values and expectations to the company values and expectations.

The key milestones are in the Table below

If you have any questions, email strategy@summitcl.com or call 0782610333. Or feel free to submit a question or clarification in the comment section below.

Copyright Summit Consulting Ltd 2021. All rights reserved.