Proper Culture Vital in Executing Strategic Initiatives
As your company reflects on and tweaks its strategy, be sure to look at how it meshes with your overall culture. In order for an organization to be successful, employees must realize and understand that what is good for the company is also good for them, says Brenda Bijnagte, a printing and manufacturing principal with LarsonAllen.
Bijnagte talks about how to foster this culture through management and key employees in the Printing Industry Financial Executives’ August 2011 newsletter, PIFELines. The following quarterly article was reprinted with permission from PIFE.
Question of the quarter with LarsonAllen’s Brenda Bijnagte
The U.S. debt was recently downgraded by Standard & Poor’s because S&P didn’t have faith that the U.S. government had a plan that could be executed to stabilize its debt dynamic. Many companies go through a similar internal debate to determine what their strategy should be for the year only to find that they are not able to execute on that strategy and shareholders are disappointed with the outcome.
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Companies need to have the right people in place who can foster a culture of change and willingness to strive for something better. |
In order for a company to be successful at executing its target strategies, it first must have a culture that is willing to foster change. Curt Coffman’s quote “culture eats strategy for lunch” contains a lot of truth. As you look around your organization, do you have the right culture? Are your people committed to helping you take the company back to profitability or to the next level?
Does your company have a culture for success?
There is a strong correlation between successful, profitable companies and a strong positive culture. We see this in organizations as they go through a number of different activities, such as Kaizen events and the lean journey.
The reason that so few companies are successful at implementing lean to a significant degree is because they need to have the right people in place who can foster a culture of change and willingness to strive for something better. The companies that have embraced lean have also encouraged a culture where people openly share mistakes and learn from them to make the process better. Who are those people in your company? Can you name them, and what role are they playing today?
In his book The Dream Manager, Matthew Kelly talks a lot about making each employee feel special. He goes so far as to coach people in a way that allows them to connect the question of “what’s in it for me?” to the overall success of the company. I am not sure that companies will embrace the idea of hiring a dream manager, but the dollars saved from reduced turnover, training, and increased productivity are astounding.
I recommend that you have these conversations at the management level. Be sure everyone is on board with the importance of this and understands the impact it can have. Educate your managers on the concept as well and encourage them to have conversations with their teams. Once employees realize and understand that what is good for the company is also good for them, they begin to act differently. They become mentors for others in the organization and will all be willing to work toward common corporate goals.
Take a look around your company. Has your culture suffered as the economy has softened over the past few years? Do you think all of your employees understand how they are contributing to the success of the entire company, and how that directly impacts them?
How we can help
It is never too early to start having these conversations to get your employees on board to help you reach that next level. LarsonAllen can assist in each of these activities from creating a strategic direction to implementing and measuring those initiatives. But without a positive culture, the execution for success may not be attainable, and shareholders will continue to be disappointed.
Brenda Bijnagte, Manufacturing and Distribution Principal
bbijnagte@larsonallen.com or 612-376-4677
View our manufacturing and distribution principals.