Assess your culture right now, and you will have the opportunity to change the trajectory of your organization’s growth.
First off, let’s congratulate ourselves for the hard work and pretty serious adaptation we did in 2020. The hard work is certainly not over (it never is, of course), but we proved last year that we are more agile than perhaps we thought we were.
But how has that adaptation impacted your culture? Culture, strategy, and execution are three parts of one, singular whole—when one of them changes, so do the other two, by definition. I know that if you had a strategic plan written in 2019 or earlier you’ve essentially rewritten it, and your execution also changed dramatically as you went to an all or mostly remote staff. So how has your culture changed? Do you even know?
Now is the perfect time to assess your culture and understand the culture patterns that are driving internal behavior. How are your people experiencing transparency when communication is mostly via zoom? Have silos broken down or become even stronger with the separation? Have you been only adapting out of necessity, or have you successfully built up your innovation practices?
You need to know what the patterns are RIGHT NOW, because at this moment—as we begin to move out of last year’s crisis—this is when we will be defining our own “new normal” as organizations. You will either let your culture change on its own, or you will intentionally shape it. Culture by default, or culture by design. If you are intentional right now, you can literally change the trajectory of your organization’s growth.
Photo by Nick Fewings