Leadership Drives Culture, Culture Drives Performance
To unleash performance, leaders need to unleash their own human potential.
According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor at Harvard Business School, “in the face of turbulence and change, culture and values become the major source of continuity and coherence, of renewal and sustainability. Leaders must be institution-builders who imbue the organization with meaning that inspires today and endures tomorrow. They must find an underlying purpose and a strong set of values that serve as a basis for longer-term decisions even in the midst of volatility. They must find the common purpose and universal values that unite highly diverse people while still permitting individual identities to be expressed and enhanced. Indeed, emphasizing purpose and values helps leaders support and facilitate self-organizing networks that can respond quickly to change because they share an understanding of the right thing to do.”
However, according to the Barrett Values Centre, the culture of an organization is a reflection of the values and beliefs of the current leaders and the institutional legacy of the values of past leaders that are embedded in the structures, policies, systems, procedures and incentives of the group.
