I’ve been working with organisations to improve their business outcomes for years now, and there is always someone on the executive team (usually the CFO) who needs convincing that ‘Culture work’ is actually not a cost to the business, but it creates a positive financial return.
In chapter 12 of my book Purpose, Passion & Performance, I delve into the cold hard stats that show focusing on culture is not a cost, but creates revenue opportunities through engaged people delivering on a shared vision, with passion.
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Human Synergistics, one of the world’s leading companies measuring and consulting on cultural transformation… and measures culture against 12 different styles of thinking and behaviour, clustered as ‘constructive’, ‘passive defensive’ or ‘aggressive defensive’ styles.
In cultures that demonstrate predominantly constructive styles, people are encouraged to interact with each other in positive and supportive ways.
In these cultures, people balance a focus on task and goal achievement with a focus on people and relationships. They are described as ‘humanistic’ companies – companies that emphasise the learning, growth and wellbeing of their people in the achievement of business goals.
These cultures outperform cultures that demonstrate predominantly ‘passive defensive’ or ‘aggressive defensive’ styles of behaviour on a number of outcomes at the individual, team and organisational levels, delivering an average performance improvement across all three levels of 28%.
Compared to those working in predominantly ‘passive defensive’ or ‘aggressive defensive’ cultures, employees in ‘constructive’ cultures report:
26% more satisfaction
32% more motivation
19% greater role clarity
26% less stress
28% better teamwork
30% better inter-unit coordination
25% more commitment to departmental quality
32% greater perception of external adaptability
32% greater perception of organisational quality.
Need more proof that culture is critical to business outcomes? Pick up a copy of my book here