We have so much to worry about right now. Culture is one of the last things we need to add to the list. Isn’t it?

Surely it’s just a “nice to have” as we struggle with such things as maintaining the health, safety and well-being of our workforce, our supply chain, and our relevance to our international customers and markets.

No. Culture is everything right now.

The world is spinning so fast, change is tumbling over itself like a spinning top about to fall. Our organisations cannot adapt our systems, policies and procedures quickly enough to remain relevant. Yet, without these tools, in a world no one has seen before, how do our people feel confident they are making the “right” decisions and following a “sound” process?

Culture – that is how.

All organisations have a culture, either implicit or explicit. It is a somewhat overused term which seems to have a huge number of meanings. I like to keep things simple. To me, your organisational culture is a set of Values that are the attitudes, mindsets and beliefs that determine how you go about delivering the product or service.

The key is to ensure you have the right Culture, one that is directly derived from your organisation’s Purpose, Strategy, and current and future operating environment. If you have identified your culture within this framing, it should enable you to:

Harness future opportunities
Avoid future strategic risks; and if they cannot be avoided
Promptly mitigate those strategic risks

The model below is one I have been using for nearly 30 years to explain the link between strategy and culture.

As the Royal Australian Commission of Inquiry into Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry stated in their Report last year, “focusing only on what is to be sold is not enough. How the employee does the job is at least as important as what the employee does.” I would go a step further and say, in terms of ongoing sustainability, it is more important.

A clear example of how an organisation can take a “mis-step” was in the media this week. This particular example, and I have to say there have been a few, was an organisation that states on their website that their people are guided by their purpose and core values which include “better together”. This value focuses on high levels of engagement and ensuring their people enjoy coming to work.

Consider then the impact of the media report that the organisation’s Executive would be taking a 15% pay cut (thereby receiving 85% of their salary) over the coming three months, while those staff members who were currently not able to work and were at home, were being asked to agree, with 24 hours’ notice, to a pay proposal that would see their salaries reduced to 65%. One can only hope that company provided complete and transparent communications with staff explaining the rationale for this pay cut, expressing empathy for their situation, the possible benefits of this approach in terms of maintaining jobs for all the company’s workforce, and some reason for the Executive only being asked to reduce their pay to 85%.

As your workforce is now working remotely, do they have a clear set of Values to assist them in navigating through the quickly changing world of complex decisions you are requiring of them?

Your management team may well be making some hard decisions over the next few weeks and months, how are your Values going to help them make and communicate those decisions?

As a Director, what questions do you need to be asking of management, to ensure that they are using your Values and culture to keep the organisation on course.

Over the next few weeks I will be sharing with you how you can use your Values and Culture to guide your remote workforce , thereby assisting them to feel confident and comfortable that they are making the right decisions, and behaving in a manner that is aligned with your desired culture, thereby ensuring long-term, sustainable business success … where possible in this changing world.

Lynda Carroll is Managing Director of Align Group Limited and a specialist in organisational culture.

Agility, Culture and COVID19