All too often, leaders make mistakes in trying to align their strategic goals with their company’s culture without taking their employees into consideration. If you do not gain the support of your employees from the onset and make the mistake of dictating change to them, you may have a long road ahead of you. Command and control do not work in today’s workplace. Employees need to feel they are part of the story that is being created for your company and want to know that their voices can help make a difference. Remember, you set the tone and by having a strong corporate culture, you are creating “a foundation for long-term success” according to Hudson (2011).
Consider the obstacle Aetna’s John W. Rowe, MD encountered, as he became the insurance organization’s fourth CEO in five years. Instead of coming into the company and laying out his strategic plans and expecting the company culture to transform overnight, he sought to tailor the strategies to the company culture. He accomplished this by taking the time to meet with employees at all levels within the company and listen to their input on how to fix Aetna while discussing what he felt needed to be done for the company. Understanding the strengths of the existing culture and reinforcing the employees’ pride in the company helped Rowe accomplish his goals of turning the company around (Katzenbach, Steffen & Kronley, 2012). This allowed Rowe to reboot the existing culture into a new and improved version that work in tandem with the strategic goals that were developed.
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Every organization has a personality and it is up to you to consider that personality before hitting the ground running with whatever change you want to implement with corporate strategy, no matter how wonder you think your ideas may be. Take the time to get to know your employees at a more personal level and understand what motivates them and learn to listen to what they have to say. Employees want to feel they are included in the story of the company and to be led by innovative leaders instead of being bossed around. Leave the old way behind and embrace the new frontier of being an effective leader.
- Hudson, M. (2011). Culture as competitive advantage. Credit Union Management, 34(4), 46.
- Katzenback, Jon, Steffen, Ilona, and Kronley, Caroline. (2012). Cultural change that sticks. Harvard Business Review. http://hbr.org/
- RoundPegg, Inc. (2012). White paper: Replacing culture change with culture alignment for a corporate win.
