Cultural Profiling: A Journey Towards Self-Discovery
Now that you have read the blog on Demystifying ‘Workplace Culture’, you are equipped to understand the importance of Cultural Profiling. The profiling exercise would be an important first step on the journey to achieve a workplace culture that is aligned with company objectives. If you haven’t read the previous blog, here’s a quick recap!
Setting the context
- A company’s culture is a critical and foundational business system, contributing directly to its success and growth.
- Workplace culture has the potential to mold employee behaviors towards a shared purpose. This enhances an organization’s capacity to thrive by influencing ethical behavior, innovation, market leadership, growth, and ultimately customer satisfaction.
- On the other hand, an unhealthy or misaligned culture can negatively impact strategic outcomes and performance, influencing customer satisfaction and loyalty, and discouraging employee engagement.
- Healthy and aligned cultures can provide a clear competitive advantage for companies. When team members trust each other and feel valued, have a shared purpose towards a common goal, and feel their work has an impact, they are more engaged with their companies and their work. Higher engagement amounts to greater success for the company.
What is Cultural Profiling?
Cultural profiling is basically an exploration exercise to discover the company’s current culture. It is the first step in the journey that will help to figure out where the organization stands today. From here, one can chart out where they want to be so that their culture starts reaping dividends.
Think of it like planning a vacation — You have an idea of where you want to go, and you may have worked out the conveyance and stay options and everything in between. But what is your starting point? Yes, it is your current location, on which your entire journey, the experience of reaching that destination, as well as the experience of the vacation will depend upon.
How to Mould Workplace Culture
Forbes, =mc, Spencer Stuart, Harvard Business Review — all point to a systematic process to help uncover and build a culture that is the best fit for an organization, keeping its mission, vision, nature, and industry in mind.
- Analyze the culture as it is now
Having focus group discussions, surveys, and employee interviews that point to existing culture styles and perspectives. - Uncover the aspirational culture goal
Discussions with the founders and leadership on where they want to see the company on the culture spectrum. - Map the differences between the current and aspirational culture (if any)
Identify areas where there are similarities (convergence points) and where there are gaps (divergence points). The goal is not to necessarily ‘change’ the culture but to understand:
a. What strengths are clear from this analysis
b. What factors work — these are the ones that need to be reinforced
c. Whether there are any cultural aspects that are misaligned with the company’s vision and mission
d. What new beliefs and behaviors need to be promoted, and at what level - Make an action plan and execute it through strategic internal communication
a. The key issues to address — both to reinforce aligned aspects and change the ones which seem ‘undesirable’
b. Who should take action — the commitment of senior leadership to action is essential
c. How you will track and measure changes
d. Who are the stakeholders who need to agree, be informed about, or sign off on any changes
e. Explain how this will help to align with business goals and strategy - Measure differences over time
a. Consider a timeline to measure changes in beliefs and associated behavior over an appropriate period.
b. Analyze and report data that depicts the progress and success of this activity.
Most startups and many small and medium-sized companies find themselves at a stage where it is important for them to understand where they want to route their culture — do they choose one route over the other, or do they find a middle path?
Either way, a robust internal communications strategy based on an omnichannel approach consisting of employee videos, blogs, internal emailers, social media posts, founder messages, internal branding, newsletters, and much more is the best place to start. Humans crave novelty — the goal is to creatively bring the ethos of the aspirational culture out to the fore, making it easy to imbibe, disseminate and pass on.
