Culture is the sum of beliefs, knowledge, experiences, and values obtained by a set of groups of people over a specific period of time through interaction, living, or working together – Millman (2007).
Ti chy (1982) stated that organizational culture means a normative glue that holds the overall organization together.
In Kotter’s book, they examined 200 companies’ cultures and how that culture, in turn, affected performance.
Deloitte Insights (2018) stated that with the increase of millennia’s being in the workforce, there are a range of programs aimed at not only protecting employees’ health but actively boosting performance as well as social and emotional well-being.
When an organization promotes a culture of transparency, has clear expectations, provides continuous feedback, and offers the right recognition, employees can easily understand what is expected of them.
A culture that does not allow employees to be open, honest, and independent nurtures inefficiency and lack of cooperation within teams. It becomes expedient for organizations that are intentional about performance to implement a performance-oriented culture.
Recommended articles: How To Attract And Retain Top Talents In Your Organization and Reasons Why Your Sales Team Keep Underperforming
Below is how to implement a performance oriented culture in an organization;
1. Reframe the mindsets of your employees:
The mindsets of employees of an organization have a way of shaping the way they behave and tend to drive what they do and should do in a company. Reshaping their mindsets to be positive helps to produce the right behaviors in the workplace. The workplace tends to have a major impact on the values and belief systems that employees have. Reshaping employees’ mindsets can be achieved through the following: By articulating a compelling change story, formal changes to processes, leadership, role modeling, and skill building.
2. Openness and trust
Organizations must run a transparent and open system such that everyone has a sense of belonging, feels secure and trusts the system.
3. Responsibility and accountability framework.
Expectations from employees must be well defined in terms of what their deliverables are and expected outcomes. They must hold themselves accountable to high standards.
4. Provide measurement to drive high performance. In other words, there must be well-defined key performance indicators. The KPIs must be objective, realistic, and unambiguous.
5. Promote Learning and development
An organization must actively promote learning, development and encourage its employees to grow.
6. Specific behavioral changes like promptness of responding to mails, dress code etc.
7. Create a robust performance management system
Good reward and compensation systems for employees who are performing well. This can be an unexpected bonus, a small gift, a paid vacation trip, etc. Also, there must be sanctions for those who are not ready or fail to embrace the organization’s culture.
8. Feedback and assessment of the impact of culture
John Kotter discovered companies that empowered their people to live their culture. significantly outperformed those that did not. It was found “Strong corporate cultures that facilitate adaptation to a changing world are associated with strong financial results.”
Recommended article: How To Attract And Retain Top Talents In Your Organization
The impact of company culture extends far beyond the happiness of employees. A good company culture will improve productivity, performance and customer experience.
Categories: Sales Performance