In my last Insight, I talked about how important leadership development is in developing a business culture.
The steps to developing a business culture are the most important piece to the puzzle.
The first thing you can do is find a professional facilitator or unbiased third party that can make tough discussions that build upon the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the leadership team, and help contain the message that needs to be transmitted and transferred down to the rank-and-file.
This is what creates the culture of your business—what the expectations are; what the work ethic and moral ethic of the workforce looks like.
It takes a project manager to organize the facilitating, as the management team (CEO, CFO, COO, etc.) won’t be able to do it and also participate fully.
Also, I find that very few of them have the time or resources available to manage the project. So I think the best and most impactful decision a company can make is to find an unbiased third party and give him/her the opportunity to professionally facilitate this process and manage it so it’s measurable.
The measure is determined by your overall business goals and objectives.
For example, will the measurement be meeting a certain business objective, such as an increase in revenue or lower turnover rates?
There has to be some way of measuring the project to see if it’s working or not, as well as to identify that you are staying on track. You also want a measure to determine if the leadership development team is actually transitioning into becoming a culture of success within the business.
That helps build a bridge of opportunity for the company to transition the data down to the direct reports and start creating a culture of training.
So there are really two steps to the process of developing your business culture:
- Getting the process moving and deciding if it’s important to you
- Getting some professional assistance in making sure it gets done
One of the things I’ve noticed recently is there are difficult times within a business, and those times give the company the most opportunity to figure out if there’s really a culture and if there’s really a leadership program in place that allows them to sustain through the tough times.
There are very few times where a business hasn’t experienced hard circumstances, but the cultures and leadership programs that are ready for those circumstances really show when times do become tough. It’s the difference between the companies that stay committed to their leadership development even through tough times and those that don’t.
So don’t say, “We can’t have anymore leadership projects, offsite retreats or any other pieces related to building a culture or leadership development of the business because times are tough and we have to be focused on other things.”
The fact is, companies are weathering the storm in a way that seems much more sustainable and are sticking to their plans, regardless of how tough the business space is.
So when the customers I’m dealing with tell me they still do leadership development and they still have these types of programs in place, that certainly shows me the difference between a company who has built a strong culture with a moral ethic and a strong leadership development group versus a company who hasn’t.
I challenge business leaders to be honest in the level of development that they’re willing to commit to in order to increase success within their businesses, be it monthly, quarterly and the less recommended bi-annual or annual meetings.
There is always a lot of noise around the decisions that a company may or may not make, or the commitments a company may or may not make, but ultimately a business is a well-oiled machine, and the leadership team is the brain that makes it all work—even when times are tough.