Strategic Cultures Drive Organization Performance

By Dr. Leslie L. McKnight, Featured Contributor

ORGANIZATIONS IN today’s climate are dealing with rapid paced changes due to technology advances, social mediums, globalization, and economic fluctuations. How an organization is positioned in the market place will be determined on their ability to strategically align resources to meet customer needs and expectations, all while managing internal practices. Strategic plans are traditionally developed in response to environmental changes and involve the top level leaders in the organization. Once adopted, the responsibility for implementation falls on the senior management team. For those organizations intentional about building agility and nimbleness in their organization, there is an emergent movement to infuse a strategic orientation into the organizations culture to achieve maximum customer satisfaction and performance. Most organizations are already designed for stability through rules and controls; however, when an organization adopts a strategic orientation mindset as a culture, there is a necessity to involve the entire system to align strategy into day to day decision making and performance. Strategic thinkers are put in place for strategic leadership that ideally funnels from the top, down to senior level management, middle managers to line staff. The practice of strategic thinking is incorporated into the organization culture and allowed to grow to the point where every employee is strategic in their choices, behaviors, and performance. This type of organization will be very adaptable to environment threats, jolts, and punctuations and will be able to demonstrate agility in crisis that threatens the organizations survival. To have a strategic system can be a powerful force in any industry and organization. Following are organization culture antecedents to align strategic goals with organization performance.

Participative Management

The need for effective and highly competent managers is greater than ever before. Managers in strategic practice will work with employees to strategize dynamic thinking, focus on the future, and obtain positive change. The preferred management style in a strategic environment should be one of instruction and guidance, not control. Participative management is practiced when power is shared, members are given an opportunity to participate, work is conducted by consensus, and multidisciplinary teams are utilized to implement processes. Effective leaders will garner participation and buy-in, act as a coach and mentor, and manage conflict. Communication channels should be porous so that ideas, information, capabilities, information, rewards and actions can be deployed quickly wherever they are most needed. Participative managers have an ability to develop diverse self directed teams and create an environment where energy, imagination and capacity for learning are unleashed. Management will also demonstrate values of employees and ideas. This will frame the corporate culture in which everyone must adopt the new principles and values, particularly senior managers. The senior leadership has the opportunity to articulate the shared purpose, provide overall direction, and develop critical success factors for the organization to improve and flourish. Unfortunately, if top management does not become involved in participatory management, the entire process will be undermined.

Leadership Traits for Participative Managers:

1. Foster teamwork
2. Foster innovation
3. Value oriented
4. Visionary
5. Authentic

Human Resource Management (HRM)

A strategically aligned organization will integrate innovative human resource management approaches within the organization to incentivize motivation, establish rewards systems, and will have a cultivating environment to nurture input and creativity. HRM strategies will align job designs, management layers, and employee engagement and training programs specifically to the organizations strategic goals. Recruitment strategies will re-conceptualize the work force paradigm into a talent force. Talent force goes beyond certain skills and knowledge; but other skills that demonstrate innovation, creativity, and the ability to work effectively as part of a team. Organizations with a strategic orientation will seek specialized talent with the ability to work cross functionally. Also, diversity will be evident in the talent force to foster a wealth of competencies and perspectives in ideas and problem solving. Profits will be measured not just based on financial performance, but also as a byproduct of job satisfaction, work life balance, diverse and progressive cultures and transparency and engagement.

Continuous and Guided Change

Finding new ways of working smarter is an endless task in today’s environment. Strategic change efforts will take time to be adopted and adapted in order for long term results. Organizations will have to be able to identify change agents within all levels of the organization and have them at the table collectively in order to obtain a more strategy system wide design. Change agents will have the ability to create a sense of urgency and have the social and technical skill sets to manage change. Change agents will work collectively within the organization to design interventions related to the organization’s process, work design, strategy, structure, performance, product, learning, and transformation. Change interventions can be constructed through guided change, which is an emergent process that involves members throughout the organization who will ultimately enhance the organization’s learning and problem-solving capacity. The guided change model provides a continuous loop to measure and reassess performance and to also garner feedback on the change efforts. Interventions will be sustainable, will shape continuous learning, and will produce desired results related to the improvement of the organization’s effectiveness.

Economies are volatile and organizations are too. Those organizations that will excel in changing markets will take a more synergistic, inclusive approach to conscious capitalism in strategy and implementation for their organization. An organization with a strategic culture will institutionalize continuous learning, intellectual capital and emotional intelligence, and be highly flexible and responsive in chaotic and complex changing environments. The organization will invoke an adopted broad, shared vision of the future, an identity, a destiny, a perspective with regard to its goals and how they can be achieved, a management that knows how to get everyone to pull in the same direction, and a leadership that is a driving force for change and which draws its strength from a culture of trust and commitment.