There are lots of frameworks for managing strategy, expertise, leadership, and performance, but not culture. Review action plans, participation events, and other improvements fail of building a strong cultural foundation that the entire organization can understand and manage with transparency and accuracy.
However, what are the usual distinctive practices of every successful CEO while leading constructive change in an organization?
Experience is their most common characteristic, coupled with learnings from peers or experts, to determine an improvement strategy. While some models exist, they do not represent official improvement methods.
Bellow, are some of the views and practices of those CEOs who are achieving to build an environment where employees can be more motivated to change the Corporate Culture Consciously.
- Determine existing primary (2-4) behavioral strengths and weaknesses and critical performance priorities.
- Clearly define the organization’s vision, towards achieving the above mentioned essential priorities of performance, by leveraging on cultural strengths and by reversing key weaknesses.
- Describe the cooperation processes and clarify values and conventional behaviors.
- Clarify and track KPIs: Identify a small number of overall measures that support the one or two top performance priorities.
- Ensure Executives’ support towards behavioral changes, in ways beyond verbal consent. They are the leaders after you, so their behavior should reflect their conformance to required changes.
- Culture change depends on behavior and mindset. Employees must clearly understand what is expected of them and how actually to do the new practices. Provide training to communicate expectations and new routines. Mentoring will also help employees learn and change.
- Create a sense of coherence and fellowship among groups that must work together. You may need to move people who must work closely together in the same place.
- Guide the company behaviors: Live the company’s ethics daily, step by step become better at applying the practices yourself. Note that everyone follows what you do. Employees acquire the habits you create.
- Appreciate and share success (make it a regular habit). Recognition suggested by the CEO is a positive way to send a message to your workforce about what values to you. Use credit as a management tool to help you inspire and achieve results.
- Start every regular meeting with a few-minutes reminder, for a successful company story, or a personal improvement you have made towards delivering behavioral excellence.
- Use Social Media to comment and share success stories regularly. You are the leader, and people follow what you like or share.
- Keep employees responsible, have essential dialogues with them. When someone’s behavior does not substantiate the company experience, discuss it politely. Let employees know you are paying attention. Use survey results, recognition participation, and performance metrics to assess and develop leaders.
- Develop motivational models during the cultural change process. Appreciate and celebrate positive results and give feedback. Face reality when improvements don’t go as intended and re-engage your team to prioritize priorities.
- Regularly communicate in written with your employees your thoughts and ideas about the organization’s experience, help them become focused and excited.
“To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then, act out the new behavior”.
Maxwell Maltz *
*Maxwell Maltz was an American cosmetic surgeon and author of Psycho-Cybernetics (1960), which was a system of ideas that he claimed could improve one’s self-image leading to a more prosperous and fulfilling life.
