Cultural Engagement for Success

Cultural Engagement for Success consists of defining, developing, deploying, and sustaining an engaged, high-performing, and winning culture. It may be applied at the corporate level, organizational, business unit, functional, or department level. Vern Dosch, CEO and author, is quoted as saying, “I used to believe that culture was “soft,” and had little bearing on our bottom line. What I believe today is that our culture has everything to do with our bottom line, now and into the future.” All levels of successful leaders and managers apply cultural engagement approaches to ensure their organizations, customers, suppliers, and team members succeed.

Cultural engagement is critical to organizational success in today’s highly competitive and global environment. Organizations must be comprised of high-performing cultures that are nimble and able to quickly implement change in strategy, structure, or technology, and are able to adapt to these changes effectively. Simon Sinek, leadership consultant, speaker, and author, is quoted as saying; “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.”

Customers are in tune with and drawn to organizations in which the culture is engaged and high performing, resulting in enhanced customer experience and satisfaction. Culture may be the single most important competitive differentiator that organizations have and can leverage to attract and retain loyal customers.

In order to attract and retain high-performing talent, organizations must have cultural engagement with a sense of belonging, contribution, and purpose. Companies can no longer compete nor survive with old-school organizational and cultural designs. Ideally, the culture is defined and developed to align with and support the organization’s purpose, vision, mission, core values, goals, and strategies.

This simple and comprehensive seven-step approach, called Cultural Engagement for Success, may be applied in any industry or business – healthcare, construction, manufacturing, service, hospitality, non-profit, government, financial – regardless of size. This handbook is designed for managers and leaders of all levels to engage a high-performing culture. It combines necessary elements – culture types, culture strategy, engagement assessment and gaps, engagement sustainment, and cultural engagement recognition – into the following seven-step Cultural Engagement for Success process:

1. Set the Culture Strategy – define purpose, vision, mission, and core values; create cultural engagement charter; understand culture types and models; define desired culture type and model; initiate cultural engagement stakeholder plan; initiate cultural engagement communication plan; create cultural engagement RACI matrix; initiate cultural engagement contact list
2. Understand the Current Culture – create cultural engagement assessment tool; conduct a cultural engagement assessment; collect and analyze responses
3. Consider the Culture Gaps – conduct and report the gap analysis
4. Create the Culture Plan – identify cultural engagement leaders; define cultural engagement action plan; define cultural engagement adoption plan; define cultural engagement training plan, align cultural engagement initiatives to culture elements; initiate cultural engagement risk plan
5. Execute the Culture Plan – monitor, manage, control, and report on the cultural engagement plans, initiatives, and activities with cultural engagement meeting agenda, minutes, and status reporting
6. Sustain Cultural Engagement – lead collaboratively; develop high-performing teams; motivate individuals and teams; resolve cultural conflicts; mold cultural consensus; and optimize human assets
7. Salute Cultural Engagement – celebrate progress toward the culture strategy; recognize advancement in developing an engaged and high-performing culture; motivate individuals and teams to adopt and execute supportive, sustaining cultural engagement initiatives

Benefits of cultural engagement include:

• Increased employee retention and sustained knowledge
• Environment of skill development, learning, and personal growth
• Sense of belonging and employee engagement
• Better and more comprehensive understanding of the organization
• Environment where silos and barriers do not exist
• Inclusive, collaborative environment in which individuals with diverse experience, skills, and backgrounds work toward common goals
• Improved quality and customer satisfaction
• Improved organizational effectiveness, compliance, and risk prevention

Following are several key success factors for an organization aspiring to achieve high-performing cultural engagement:

• Leadership support, involvement, and visibility
• Focus on and commitment to the culture
• Clearly communicated and understood: purpose, vision, mission, and core values; strategies, deliverables, goals, and expectations; benefits and impacts to groups and individuals
• Ability to contribute to overall organizational success
• Feeling of belonging, worth, and purpose
• Training and skill development plans and opportunities
• Career opportunities and clear paths for advancement
• Recognition and celebration of success

Value Generation Partners wishes you much success in your pursuit of cultural engagement, thereby generating increased value for your stakeholders, customers, associates, and organization! 

Cultural Engagement for Success is useful in combination with other LinkedIn Pulse posts found at this link.

Find more on related topics in Cultural Engagement for Success Handbook, which is available on Lulu.com and other book distributors in paperback and eBook. With the purchase of any handbook, the reader has access to a companion toolbox file containing all referenced templates.