COS: highlighting the importance of a system for company culture
Wednesday, October 2, 2024 - Joe Kiedinger
What makes a culture ineffective?
One of the things I’ve come to understand over my time in this industry is that a lot of organizations tend to mismanage their culture. There are some very common approaches to creating and maintaining a culture that don’t always work, and there is one underlying reason behind most of them failing. I know this is a big claim, so let me illustrate a few examples of what I mean, and hopefully the picture will become clearer for you.
It’s not uncommon to see companies that develop a list of core values and a mission statement (which is a great start), put them up on the wall, maybe publish them in a press release or an article, and just leave them there as a feel-good item. The values themselves become an afterthought, and employees end up either not knowing or not applying those values for one reason or another.
Sometimes, we see companies struggling with employee engagement. Their response is to launch a one-off initiative, which might boost engagement temporarily, but within a year or perhaps even less, they will be back to square one, and engagement is a problem again. They are left wondering why employees can’t stay actively engaged despite their best efforts.
Another situation that’s fairly common is that people just simply cannot seem to get along, no matter what. Any disagreement turns into a clash of egos and personalities, important projects are derailed because of a failure to communicate and collaborate, managers aren’t getting what they need from their employees and vice versa. Negativity takes over and things don’t get done.
These things can happen in any organization, even those that pride themselves on a world-class culture and have a rich history of evidence and results to back it up. It can happen anywhere! When culture is treated like an intangible, isn’t tracked or measured, or worse yet, treated as something that is peripheral to success, it’s not going to be something that can be sustained over time, and it won’t create any emotional or financial value in your company.
Systems: the gateway to an effective culture
We leaders love trackability, accountability, and results. We are trained to create and follow systems that generate bottom-line success for our people and our company, and we adapt what we do based on a constant stream of information and results that tell us what works and what doesn’t. Culture doesn’t have to be any different. The most productive way to create and upkeep an exceptional culture is through a trackable, measurable, and repeatable system. Contrary to popular belief, this can be done, and it has been done.
Lean manufacturing is driven by lean culture, which promotes and rewards mutual respect, collaboration, and internal improvement with the end goal of providing the maximum possible amount of satisfaction to the customer. This system, synergized with lean manufacturing practices, is what has brought some of the most successful companies in the world to the top of their industries, like Toyota.
The Culture Operating System
Dignify’s Culture Operating System (COS) offers a customized strategic framework designed to align a company’s vision, values, and goals, which ensures a systematic approach to growing a company’s culture and operations. It combines technology, coaching, curriculum to establish and maintain a high-performing culture at all levels of your organization. The Culture Operating System will enable you to:
- Lead yourself
- Discover your own dignity and know what motivates you, how you prefer to operate and communicate, and how to apply dignity in your day-to-day life
- Lead others
- Understand how to connect with your people and guide them to success within the context of dignity-based communication and people-first leadership
- Lead initiatives
- Take your company to the next level by learning how to create positive, lasting change at the individual, departmental, and organizational level
With the COS in place, leaders are equipped to create a company culture that empowers its people and supports operational growth. Dignify’s coaches work hand-in-hand with leaders from the executive to the operational level to create the framework for each level of the COS, help them get after their individual and organizational goals, and upkeep the COS once it’s in place. Through Dignify technology, leaders can use Snapshots, Check-Ins, Surveys, Reporting metrics, and more to track, measure, and reinforce their culture.
The bottom line
A system equips leaders with all the tools they need to bring structure to their culture. Core values become lived experiences, conflicts become opportunities to exchange perspectives and grow, and people have the resources they need to understand each other. Some of the most successful companies in the world discovered this early and built it into their way of business. Dignify’s Culture Operating System brings all the value of a system to your culture through a combination of technology, coaching, and curriculum.
JOE KIEDINGER
ACTION PLAN: Book a call and learn more about Dignify’s COS.