Creating High-Performance Culture - Essay Example

NAME : XXXXXXXXXX TUTOR : XXXXXXXXXX TITLE : XXXXXXXXXXX COURSE : XXXXXXXXXX INSTITUTION : XXXXXXXXXX @2009 High Performance Culture Introduction Culture in an organization relates to the personality of employees. It is the pattern of collective attitudes, standards and assumptions that are attained over time and which influences the behavior of employees. The culture of an organization determines how decisions are made, how customers and employees are treated and the way things are done. Research studies have found a significant correlation between culture and performance in an organization. Developing a high performance culture creates the ability for an organization to realize its goals and objectives. This makes the shareholders to feel that they have succeeded in their vision. The employees also feel proud of being part of such an organization (Willlcoxsom 2000). For an organization to compete and excel in the dynamic and unpredictable global market, it needs to develop employees who are flexible and adaptable. This can only occur if the organization develops a high performance working culture. A high performance culture drives self-improvement which is a core value in most organization. A high performance culture drives the company’s performance as it ensures that every employing is performing at their highest level. It also set alignment and develop an impetus for the entire organization. A high performance aligns stakeholders as it communicates consistent messages to external stakeholders (Flannery 1996). A high performance culture also serves to accumulate human capital as it maintains staff morale with a sense of achievement and belonging. It also attracts new talent. A high performance culture provides meaning and emotional bond to employees that paycheck cannot offer. This bond results into increased commitment and pride, which leads to higher retention and discretional effort. It also prevent bad business practices and behavior which can alienate clients and employees who come to work each day with good intentions and high achievement needs. It gets rid of leaders who do not practice core values of the organization before their behaviors spoil morale and drive of other leaders. A high performance culture guides and inspires employee when making decisions so that they do what is expected of them even when the manager is not there. A strong culture also helps determine those who do not require leaves or those who cannot be hired in the organization based on the desires culture attributes of the organization. It also provides a fixed point of reference and stability during period of great crisis and change (Armstrong 2006). There are several key characteristics for a high organizational performance culture to lead to results improvement and enable to the organizational to compete in a highly dynamic environment. First, a high performance culture must have a well defined organizational vision and mission. The mission and vision of an organization answers the question why the organization exits. It serves to inspire, enlighten stakeholders, generate client loyalty, ignite employee zeal and encourage discretionary effort. A high performance culture must also have common organizational values. Organizational core values serve to guide employee behavior and shape business practices as the organization strives to deliver its promises to its clients, employees and external stakeholders. The organizational core values therefore act as guiding principles and rules as regards the behaviors of all stakeholders. A high performance culture must have a clear and agreed performance standards and expectations (Alexander 2001). Another characteristic of a high performance culture is shared accountability. The organization cannot achieve high performance unless every employee becomes accountable for his/her results. Hence, a high performance culture should be result-based, that is, it identifies and communicates key organizational targets, goals and strategic priorities and holds every employee accountable to achieve these targets. To enhance accountability, a high performance culture should provide timely, accurate and reliable information to all employees. Therefore, a high performance culture should be supportive and performance focused. It should develop mechanism for rewarding and recognizing employees who exhibit the desired cultural values. A high performance culture should have open and transparent communication and develop appropriated communication channels which encourages feedbacks at all levels. This is to ensure that information is cascaded effectively from the top management level to the front-line levels. It should make use of informal networks to encourage professional interaction (De Cieri and Kramar 2008). Creating a high performance culture In this part, I will create a high performance culture that will see employees develop desired culture attributes and improves organizational performance within a one year period. The main goal of developing this high performance culture is to leverage culture to drive the organizational strategy to achieve high levels of performance. To create a high performance culture within an organization, there are three critical phases that are involved; the planning phase, the implementation phase and sustain phase. Planning phase: planning phase involves three steps; developing a committed leadership team, desired culture attributes and plan and tools for implementation. A committed leadership team: The first step that should be taken when designing a high performance culture is by developing a dedicated leadership team that shares a common vision for the organization. Such leaders can influence the culture of the organization by influencing decisions making and initiating actions which can lead to high performance (Alexander 2001). Desired culture attributes: This involves defining the culture attributes that are preferred and needed for the organization to be high performing. To do this it is important for the leadership team to develop a culture model for the organization. This involve conducting a high level assessment of organization issues and challenges and visualizing the type of organization people want to build and become part of. By this, we acknowledge that transforming culture is a process of social construction. It requires the commitment of all employees. The desired culture attribute is for employees to be performance focused, collaboration, customer focused, have open communication, innovative and truthfulness (Alexander 2001). Plan and tools: The next step is action planning approach which involves developing a plan and tools for implementation. In this step, it is imperative to come up with a core change plan and an ancillary plan. This involve coming up with a compass or a road map which outlines what need to be addressed. To be able to determine what need to be done, it is important to carry out a root cause analysis. Ancillary plan involve coming up with other change initiatives which can support the core plan. This will include re-designing the organization policies, procedure and management practices such as employees’ development and training and performance appraisal to make sure that they are conducted in line with the desired culture attributes. It will also involve assessing and designing organizational processes such as procurement, human resource, information technology, finance among other using the culture model. If not addressed, these areas can be potential barriers to culture change as they cut across the whole organization. These changes will also help to drive the kind of behaviors needed by the culture. For example, introducing performance contracts will help the organization realize the culture attribute of employees being performance focused (Nankervis 2002). The other step in this planning action approach involves developing tools which will assist in the culture change process. This involves coming up with instruments to measure culture, workshops to communicate and train the culture elements, guidebooks for the leadership team and training materials. These tools act as means for inculcating main culture behaviors to all the employees in the organization. Implementation Phase- This is the real action step where all the tools and process are put into action. This step will involve 4 steps; organizing a central support change group, establishing local unit change facilitators, conducting a start-up rollout for each local unit, developing and executing a localized execution plan and finally but not least supporting the ancillary plan where necessary. Central support team: Though the core implementation process is centered on the local units, it is imperative to establish a centralized group which will oversee the development of common tool to be used in the implementation process. This group will offer consulting support, make sure that the whole process of change is integrates, identify constraints factor that should be looked at from a headquarters outlook and assist in the conveying learning and best practices (Ivancevich 2005). Change facilitators: This will involve selecting committed individuals to serve as change facilitators in the local units. It is therefore important to select individuals who know the organization very well, who are trustworthy and have the ability to manage communications and assist in facilitating the change process. It is critical to conduct an in-depth training for these individuals since they don’t have a background in change management in order to prepare them for these roles. These will be the right person to work with the local manager in making the change process a success. The role of change facilitators will be to organize a variety of activities and conferences, managing local communication plan and advising and influencing employees. The change facilitators need to design change strategies and manage the entire process of change while taking into consideration the chief elements that will uphold the change. Since this process involves high-level skills, change facilitators can pull some of these skills from the central team. The change facilitators will be trained on analysis and assessment skills, ethics of change management and facilitating group and appropriate components of the organization change plan that could be more than those of the culture components (Corelli 2003). Creating local units: The employees will be divided into 5 local units each consisting of 1000 employees. A focused start-up of 3-4 weeks will be planned to help each local unit to wake up and start participating in the culture change process. It is important to spread these local units over a period of time to allow the central team enough time to provide concerted support. Though the primary focus of this change is culture, all changes need to be integrated for this change to succeed. This step should involve visiting these local units with the site manager to set out the strategy and identify individuals who can form part of the leadership team, organizing a leadership start-up conference to evaluate the strategy and create a universal commitment, using the employees as an evaluation team to perform a local culture appraisal, finalize the assessment and develop a report for the leadership team, develop a continuous implementation plan, based on the assessment, to address key issues and lastly to arrange for a supervisors and employees meeting to communicate to them the results, the way forward and to specify the anticipated role of employees and the outcomes expected from this change process (Owen 2001). Localized implementation plan: Each unit will develop an execution plan that will carry them up to next year. This plan consists of the actions which will be taken based on the assessment developed during the rollout phase while the preliminary plan will be developed in the start-up phase. Since this plan will vary depending on the culture attribute desired, a pre-determined plan will be developed along the way if the assessment report shows some key gaps. However, external consultants, local managers and employees will key participants in this process. The main elements of this phase will include developing a local communication plan that is linked to the organization communication plan, performing local leadership reviews, developing a workshop strategy, setting performance and behavior targets, designing rewards and promotion for recognizing employees who displays the desired culture attributes and establishing focus groups to address particular issues and apply innovative methods (Flannery 1996). Ancillary support group: The desired culture model should be framed to cut across all aspects of the organizational processes since culture can be affected by numerously elements of the organizational processes. Therefore, each of the project team should make good use of the central team to make sure that the changes that are designed support and enable the desired culture. Key processes, procedures or practices that constrain the desired culture should be taken as next target for change. The central team will guide ancillary project group into developing the desired culture attributes (Shield J. 1999). Sustain phase: To ensure the sustainance of this project, it is imperative to conduct continuous monitoring and evaluation of the culture needs. In short, the implementation phase never ends, as the organization keeps on evolving. Though, when the desired behaviors are embedded in most employees and performance improves the level of intensity of change activities decreases. The key elements towards achieving a sustainable change process involve conducting continuous reinforcement, monitoring and evaluation and implementing appropriate interventions where necessary (Willlcoxsom 2000). Continuous reinforcement: To sustain the desired culture attributes, it is important to continuously reinforce such behaviors by incorporating the desired culture behaviors with the evaluation process and giving rewards and promoting employees who displays such characters. For new employees who are recruited into the organization should be oriented based on the desired culture attributes. In this way, the culture model can be constantly communicated and used as a basis for self-assessment. Leaders should continue to display best practices and behaviors as this is a very persuasive way to influence others (Corelli 2003). Continuous monitoring and measurement: It is important to conduct periodic measurements of the culture to monitor the progress of the change process and identity areas which need adjustments. This will be done by use of an annual organization questionnaire that contains culture-based questions and by conducting periodic culture assessments by use of behavior-anchored measurement tools. Focused groups discussions will also be established to find out whether people have developed the desired culture attributes. The culture needs identified should be regularly discussed in leadership conferences at both the local and corporate level to come up with possible solutions (Owen 2001). Intervention and Adjustment: As the organization continues to grow, so do its needs and this necessitates the hiring of new employees and adapting new structures. This nay call for new culture attributes. It is therefore important to come up with appropriate interventions to continue shaping the culture of the organization. In conclusion, though creating a high performance culture is a very difficult and challenging process, it is the only way the organization can achieve a competitive advantage and excel in this time of great economic downturns. The end result is that the organization will manage to achieve its goals and objectives and hence become successful. Leaders should therefore endeavor to develop effective leadership skills to act as examples to other employees. References Alexander J. (2001). Creating a high performance culture: Leadership roles and responsibilities. Professional Services leadership report (4th quarter ed). AFSM International, Fort Myers, Florida. Armstrong M. (2006). A manual of human resource management practices: New horizons in management. Kogan Page publishers, New York. Corelli C. (2003). Creating a high performance culture of excellence. Expert magazines, ExpertMagazine.com De Cieri H. and Kramar R. (2008). Human resource management in Australia: Strategy, people, performance. Melbourne: McGraw-Hill. Flannery T. et al. (1996). People, Performance and Pay. Dynamic compensation for changing Organizations. The Free Press, New York. Ivancevich J. et al. (2005). Organization behavior and management. London. McGraw-Hill. Nankervis A. et al. (2002). Strategic human resource management (4th ed). Melbourne: Nelson Thomson. Uncertainties Owen K. et al. (2001). Creating and sustaining a high performance organization. Managing service quality, 11(1) 10-21. Shield J. (1999). Changing organizations: techniques for speeding up culture change processes. Information knowledge systems management, 1(2): 105-115. Willlcoxsom L. (2000). Defining and creating a high performance organization. Australia Journal of Management and organizational behavior. Read More