Posts Categorized: Culture

Perks great, but a thriving culture takes much more

August 5 2024

Creating a thriving workplace culture goes far beyond offering flashy perks like free lunches, yoga classes and dog-friendly offices, as appealing as these may be. And if we think it’s all about pay and benefits, think again. Whereas employees say that being paid fairly makes them twice as likely to think their workplace is great, when employees are proud of their work, they are 20 times more likely to say it’s a great workplace! At its core, a great company… Read more »

Are your managers destroying staff engagement?

July 24 2024

Many leaders would love to know the key to staff engagement in their workplace. Well, let’s start with manager engagement. Managers not engaged globally Only 3 in 10 managers globally are engaged in their jobs, according to Gallup’s most recent global survey of workplaces (engagement meaning feeling involved and enthusiastic about the workplace and one’s role). The obvious question is: how can managers who aren’t highly engaged in their jobs engage and improve the wellbeing of those they lead? Clearly,… Read more »

Time to address the Great Stagnation

July 17 2024

As a team member in mid 2024, you might be feeling depleted, but stuck! If you’re an employer, you might be noticing some disturbing signs of burnout in your teams, and feeling an urge to reassess how you support your staff. Or perhaps you’re feeling a need to help individuals connect their work to a broader purpose? It’s not just you. It’s consistent with a growing attempt to re-energise rising numbers of employees who either feel stuck in their jobs,… Read more »

Does Culture REALLY eat Strategy for breakfast?

August 24 2021

I originally published this piece on LinkedIn back in May 2018, including some ideas sparked by the 2018 Australian Leadership Summit. That was back when we used to attend actual events! Am re-posting it today as it’s worth a quick read if you ever wonder about the answer to this time-honoured question. Have added a couple of 2021 edits or notes… Culture has been said to eat Strategy for breakfast (or lunch!). But does it really? When around 75-80% of… Read more »

Boards now seeing Culture as the big merger success factor.

August 22 2019

Boards now seeing Culture as the big merger success factor. We’ve noted for some time that Strategy is number 1, but Culture eats it for breakfast, and the good news is that the Director community is increasingly coming out and clearly identifying the importance of culture. While this may be partly in relation to directors responding to tighter regulation and the impact of royal commissions on directors’ duties, it also just makes good business sense. It was clear again at… Read more »

Does culture REALLY eat strategy for breakfast?

May 22 2018

When around 70-80% of efforts around ‘change strategies’ fail to realise the gains they set out to achieve, it’s not just about poor implementation of a brilliant idea! Perhaps, culture is the real culprit… The famous ‘what eats what’ notion has been attributed to Peter Drucker, originating the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast” somewhere back in C20. Sometimes ‘lunch’ replaces ‘breakfast’, but the point remains the same. No matter how good your strategy is, your organisational culture is more… Read more »

Engagement, climate and performance – what’s the connection?

March 25 2014

High turnover typically means low organisational health – it’s disruptive and expensive. ‘Commitment to stay’ is supposed to be great. But low turnover can be a problem too, depending on how it relates to engagement. How do you know which you have? Employee engagement ‘Engagement’ has now ascended to a level akin to the holy grail. Engagement tends to mean people stay on with the organisation, but sometimes ‘intention to stay’ gets confused with real engagement. Puzzling…? The wrong sort… Read more »