Culture can be your competitive advantage. This is a key finding from the just released PwC Global Cultural Survey 2021 (find it here) that was conducted in March of this year across 42 countries and over 3,000 participants.
For 66% of respondents, culture is now more important to performance than the organisation’s strategy or operating model. Culture is the factor which binds these together with the organisations purpose. Overwhelming the conclusion is that culture is connected to business success, as you can see from the extracted exhibit below:
A distinctive culture also assists with:
- smoother change initiatives
- more consistent performance
- pivoting in time of crisis
A key factor in having a distinctive culture that contributes to business success is leadership that walks the talk. Interestingly, the survey notes that “business leaders believe they are the walking embodiment of the organisation
A culture, values and purpose, but their employees disagree”, and “many workers feel they are not fully seen or heard and that workplaces aren’t as inclusive as they think.” As a consequence, “employees are losing faith in the power of culture, even though the senior executive team believe culture is more important than strategy or operating models.”
The key to addressing this is to “identify and prioritise strategic goals, then understand which traits and behaviours support these goals, and then activate and begin to evolve their culture by using key organisational levers or enabler”. These nine enablers are identified and described in the report.
The report concludes that “when aligned with strategy, purpose and the operating model, culture can be a powerful force that supports retention and acts as an insurance policy against future crisis.” And who wouldn’t want that?