Business Reinvention Starts With Leadership

It’s a widely held belief that all businesses, regardless of size, will need to go through a process of reinvention to stay relevant. While this philosophy has served some companies well in certain scenar­ios, organisations still inadver­tent­ly make choices that ac­cel­er­ate their demise.

A well-trodden yet often misguided path to business rejuvenation is to focus on the reinvention of a product or a service offering. While following this road makes theoretical sense — new things attract new customers, which fosters growth, which channels revenue, which many argue is the modern capitalist’s raison d’etre — often the result is counterintuitive.

The key to reinvention isn’t altering a product, delivering a different service or chasing an alternative demographic. It comes down to cultural change, which is the most discussed yet least understood topic on the planet.

It’s concerning that the business case for culture is widely accepted yet few leaders know how to shape and shift their cultures effectively.

The fastest way to reinvent your culture is to steer clear of the most common pitfalls that organisations succumb to when undertaking a well-intentioned but often unsuccessful attempt to shift their culture.

A 2008 McKinsey survey showed that 94 per cent of senior executives believed that people and culture were the most important drivers for innovation, yet while an almost universal awareness existed in the collective consciousness of these business leaders, the global financial crisis still provided the single most disruptive business era, sending an unprecedented number of businesses to an early financial grave.

Unlocking business potential is about shifting the definition of value towards purpose-driven value rather than monetary value. Key influencers would be wise to accept the fact they might be contributing to cultural dysfunction.

Culture is a living organism that shifts and changes constantly. As a leader, if you’ve decided that your organisational culture needs to shift, you need to accept that you’ve led the culture to its present misalignment.

This is a courageous, soul-searching and egoless dig into where we’ve come up short. It’s a tough exercise for even the bravest of heart.

Failure to buy into proposed cultural shifts is a problem faced by many senior leadership teams. While cultural change makes for interesting reading in annual reports, it is a vastly different prospect to instigating incremental improvements to business as usual.

Every organisation has values. They often are emblazoned on key documents and advertisements, but how accurate are these corporate hallmarks? Organisational values are much more aligned to the everyday conversations in the hallways than what is written on the wall. Leaders must listen and observe the behaviour and chats that occur in the corridors.

While values-driven organisations are in vogue at the moment, it is vital to have organisational values that truly reflect the values of the people in the organisation. Every business is a human business and ultimately, without staff emboldened by a sense of purpose, there’s little point in running a business.