Flexibility, diversity, and effectively solving advanced problems play an increasingly important role in the success of organizations. Teams must complement each other with their different perspectives and competencies. At the same time, organizations face continuous change both internally and externally.
With today’s challenges, how do you build scalable and long-term success?
The long-term success of the organization is in the culture
Today, organizations often set clear short- and long-term goals and strategies to achieve them. However, many struggle with getting the entire organization to work in a common direction – and pave the way for success.
“As we all know, it does not matter if the organization has well-thought-out goals and an elaborate strategy; if the employees do not believe in and work according to the organization’s plan, you will not get very far,” says Johannes Midtbö, CEO of Populum.
“It does not matter if the organization has well-thought-out goals and an elaborate strategy; if the employees do not believe in and work according to the organization’s plan, you will not get very far.”
Organizational culture is based on all the organization’s values, norms, and assumptions. These affect the attitudes and behaviors of employees and leaders.
“Management sets the necessary focus areas to ensure the organization’s long-term success and to work effectively with them; organizational culture plays a vital role. A successful organizational culture has a longer-term perspective than goals and strategies. Therefore, culture must act as the main engine to enable and drive the organization’s long-term success,” Johannes continues.
Populum’s platform focuses people on the right behaviors
An appropriate expression is “What gets measured gets done.” In short, what you measure is where the focus will be – which means a positive upward pressure for change is automatically created for what is being measured.
One way to successfully promote desirable behaviors on a large scale is to regularly measure and follow up on the selected behaviors and the culture.
“Many still measure only once a year in the form of a traditional employee survey. Culture and behavior are important throughout the year, so once a year is not enough,” explains Johannes.
“Many still measure only once a year in the form of a traditional employee survey. Culture and behavior are important throughout the year, so once a year is not enough.”
Leveraging a continuous employee survey, so-called pulse measurement, to focus on culture and the right behaviors is becoming increasingly common in both the private and public sectors. With nine questions sent to employees monthly via e-mail or SMS, each employee is regularly reminded of the most critical success factors management has chosen to focus on. All employees and managers answer the same questions anonymously and receive continuous follow-up on how all teams in the entire organization are doing.
“Our customers regularly measure the focus areas that management deems important for the organization’s success. As experts, we offer ready-made research-based question packages that you can use, but you can also choose to measure your own cultural success factors. A common example is that you want to create greater clarity in your organization and a culture of better planning, better predictability, simpler communication, and straighter decision-making paths. If that is the case, you measure clarity as part of your cultural transformation. The result is that the entire organization gathers around increased clarity and with positive upward pressure for change around clarity,” says Johannes.
We build success together – a culture for the entire organization
The organizational culture distinguishes and unites the organization and applies to everyone. Therefore, culture is especially well-suited to follow up in a regular employee survey.
“If you succeed in building a sustainable organizational culture, you have won in many areas; happier employees, which probably creates happier customers, reduced sickness absence, better employee retention, and increased profitability. Rarely does a strategic initiative have such impact and at the same time is this simple to execute,” concludes Johannes.
