3 keys to creating a high-performance culture in your company plus the benefits and importance of investing in company culture
What actually drives performance. Wilber’s theory in your company. And 3 steps to begin using today. We recently hosted a hugely successful webinar on how to create a high-performance culture in your company. And you can watch Dr Cobus Oosthuizen (PhD Human Behavioural) deliver some exciting new ideas here.
NEW: Check out our all-new dedicated site to showing you how to build a high-performance culture.
“So we collectively spend millions in our companies, creating entire departments to manage our people’s performance. And what do they do? Show up on time, sign the form and fall asleep during the training and ignore the performance reports. There’s got to be a better way,” says Dr Cobus.
Plus: Discover the key drivers of performance, how challenging people’s beliefs can drive real change.
AND: Discover the 4 most common company culture types. And how to write a job ad for your culture.
WATCH: HOW TO CREATE A HIGH-PERFORMANCE CULTURE IN YOUR COMPANY
This is the recording of the first in our online webinars on change-management sessions for companies on 26 March 2020. And, if you don’t know LifeXchange Solutions yet, we started 15 years ago working with gangsters on the Cape Flats to try and figure out how the mind works. And we’ve made some remarkable discoveries using the disciplines of neuroscience, psychology and sociology to apply to change-mindsets in business. See our neuromanagement and advanced change-management business solutions.
The first step to driving performance through culture in your company is knowing what truly impacts performance:
WHAT DRIVES PERFORMANCE IN YOUR COMPANY?
When we look at traditional thinking in business, we see a pattern that assumes that our systems and procedures can drive performance. This despite all the evidence to the contrary. Your rules, systems and performance might force some productivity out of people, but it fails to unlock each individual’s true ability to perform.
Dr Cobus proposes that systems don’t drive performance. Instead: people’s core beliefs drive performance. If you truly understand how to brain works you’ll know why company culture is so important.
“We can physically see this every day in that people can tick the boxes for all your systems and procedures – they’re at work on time, they’ve signed the register, they’re present at the meeting – but still not truly perform,” says Dr Cobus.
“I’ve seen it before. People come to training sessions and do everything they need to technically remain within the parameters of the system, but then they fall asleep during the training and miss everything.”
The key to really unlocking performance lies in challenging the beliefs people they hold about themselves and the company. In other words, the company culture.
WHAT IS COMPANY CULTURE?
Simply put, it’s just “the way we do things around here”. The way we automatically do things and respond to scenarios collectively. Explore more around: what is company culture.
What’s interesting is that Dr Cobus says you can function perfectly in various cultures. You can have a home culture and then walk into a completely different culture at work. In fact, this is vital in countries where you have lots of people from diverse cultural backgrounds. See why it’s so important to develop a strong company culture in South Africa.
HOW TO ASSESS YOUR COMPANY CULTURE
Now, an organisation is already quite a complex thing without you having to try and understand what each individual inside it thinks and believes about themselves and the company. But Dr Cobus has a simplified way to measure, assess and understand your own company culture.
Based on Ken Wilber’s integral theory, he uses a MASQ (Multi-Agent Systems based on Quadrants) system to understand really complex things. It breaks the complex down into four basic parts: 1) Individual (single person) and 2) Collective (whole company), plus whether the thing you’re looking for happens 3) Internally (you can’t see it) or is visible 4) Externally (you can see it or its effects.
Using this 4-step method, you can analyse your entire company, discover what the culture is and start making positive changes to increase performance. See a step-by-step explanation on how to use this in our post on how to understand company culture.
3 PRACTICAL STEPS: KEYS TO BUILDING HIGH-PERFORMANCE CULTURE
1. WHAT CULTURE DO YOU WANT?
“Start by looking at the fourth quadrant in the assessment and try and imagine what your company would be like if people are performing the way you want them to: They’re on time, they’re meeting targets and they’re also happy,” Dr Cobus says.
“We so often get fancy marketing or PR guys in to write our company vision and mission for us, but you can’t actually do that. You need to do it, you need to set the dream.
“And then you need to take that dream and move over to the second quadrant and say: how can we line up what we want with our systems and processes?”
For an exciting new idea on how to manage processes that drive performance, check out strengths and strengths-based development.
2. GET HEROES TO MODEL THE RIGHT BEHAVIOUR
“You absolutely need people within your company to live that dream. Everyone needs to see and feel that it’s real, it’s tangible and possible,” Dr Cobus continues.
“When we first started our own company LifeXchange, we were looking for a new way to do things. And we came up with a lot of ideas, but were unsure how to implement them. Until we saw Ricardo Semler’s TED Talk about companies with almost no rules. Then it all clicked into place and we created something new and exciting. Often, you just need to see someone model what you want.”
For ideas on doing this, see what is mentoring in a company and unlock our advanced mentoring training.
Note: We’re hosting a special talk on this topic: Here’s how to join our free mentoring vs coaching webinar.
3. START CHALLENGING PEOPLE’S BELIEFS
“If beliefs are what determines people’s behaviour, you need to challenge those in a healthy way. Start by exploring people’s beliefs and find ways to equip everyone with the knowledge and skills to be able to recognise when someone is acting out of fear or anger or pride instead of looking at the facts,” Dr Cobus explains.
And, as you might have guessed, this is the part where the neuroscience comes in, understanding the brain’s function and how it affects behaviour. Which is one of the things that Dr Cobus and his team are most famous for – discover the remarkable insights of his neuromanagement workshops and what people said about them.
“If you start with those 3 things – challenge beliefs, get role models in your company and line up your systems with what you want your culture to be, you’ll be on your way to creating a high-performance culture,” Dr Cobus concludes.
Got a culture or performance question? Ask LifeXchange Solutions.
You might also like…
Discover how you can help your leadership improve performance. And see how to use your metrics to improve performance.
Need to up your team’s game? Check out the revolutionary Performance Culture Model.
In fact, see all of this year’s big upcoming management and HR webinars.
See how to develop resilient people who’ll rally behind you in a crisis with resilience theory.
Discover the 4 domains of leadership strengths.
And check out LIfeXchange’s advanced management training full-service organisational development.
Connect and share your journey with us:
Facebook | Linkedin | Twitter | Instagram