The year 2019 is already in its final stretch, and many companies are beginning to conduct their year-end reviews.
In your view, was this a good year for your business?
If you are ending the month (and the year) with the feeling that your company could have generated more revenue, your teams could have been more engaged, or your projects could have delivered better results, there is an important issue that may have gone unnoticed throughout the year.
And we are not talking about revenue, metrics, trends, or market technologies.
We are talking about your internal culture or, as some call it, the soul of your business. We understand this is a difficult subject for leaders to address, but it is undoubtedly one of the factors that most impacts your business results.
Companies that develop their internal culture generally have more engaged and aligned teams, understand the business's values and key priorities, and as a result achieve complex goals and targets more swiftly, generating greater output in less time.
Since culture is something difficult to define — and even harder to measure — many leaders and managers avoid discussing the subject or delegate it as a task for the Human Resources department. Both groups typically only discuss culture when a very serious problem arises within the company.
One of the most extensive surveys on the subject was conducted by the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, with more than 5,000 executives.
The respondents were from major American and European companies. Ninety percent of them stated that culture is extremely important to company results. On the other hand, only 15 percent affirmed that their company's current culture was ideal for achieving those results.
Another global survey conducted by Deloitte with 7,000 executives reveals that fewer than 2,000 of them — roughly one third of respondents — claim to truly understand the concept of culture.
And if you still have doubts about whether a strong culture can deliver better results for your business, take a look at this study:
American researcher James Heskett, emeritus professor at the Harvard University Business School, was one of the first to establish a direct correlation between culture and financial results. Over the past three decades, he analyzed data from 200 companies inside and outside the United States.
According to him, an effective culture impacts not only revenue but also non-financial — yet equally important — aspects of your business, such as employee retention, customer relationships, and consumer loyalty to products and services.
He concluded that nearly half of the operating profit among the highest-earning companies was directly linked to their internal culture.
In summary, Heskett found that a strong, results-focused culture can provide you with:
— Employees 3x more likely to remain at your company;
— Up to 1.7x more satisfied with their own work;
— Generates up to 10x more financial return for shareholders;
— Is capable of delivering up to 120 percent higher performance from your employees compared to disengaged ones;
(Source: EY Consulting)
Can you imagine the results that a simple adjustment to your company's internal culture could bring to your team and your business throughout all of 2020?
We understand that discussing culture — especially a culture focused on business results — is no simple task.
But with executives and managers truly committed to making this change happen in mind, StartSe invited 2 of the country's foremost names in Culture and Performance to guide you on this journey (which need not be traumatic, nor particularly laborious).
The training Gestão da Cultura para Resultados takes place on January 28 and 29 in partnership with Crescimentum.
It specializes in Corporate Education and Organizational Culture Management, helping companies with behavioral development and cultural transformation focused on leadership evolution at various levels — having trained more than 160,000 professionals in Brazil and abroad.
After the 2-day immersion, you will leave this training able to:
— Create a shared leadership model, freeing your company from the outdated hierarchical management model;
— Define a Solid Culture grounded in Values so that everyone in your company has clear objectives to pursue;
— Build your own Onboarding model that accelerates employee readiness and alignment with company values;
— Define your Talent Attraction strategy to bring the right people to your company, reducing turnover rates and securing employees who care as much about your results as you do;
— Structure a New Selection Model for employees, which will help you assess whether they share the same culture as your company;
— Learn about the Empowerment Model for your company's leadership, which will make your management model faster and more decentralized, so that the most important decisions in your business are no longer concentrated in a single person's hands;
— And much more…
This immersion is limited to just 60 participants, and is designed for those seeking significantly better business results throughout 2020.
Reserve your place before the first cohort sells out and the immersion price increases in 2020.
Source: Startse
Does physical space drive innovation?
By Pedro Weingertner
We live today in a cult of the beautiful workplace — with game tables, beer on tap, relaxation areas and, why not, ball pits. However, within ACE's area of expertise, space alone does not mean innovation. Innovation is about culture, processes, people, and values.
Companies often have the wrong idea about the role of a creative environment. One example: betting on an open-plan office to emulate a more transparent company — when, in reality, one has nothing to do with the other. Changing the physical space is pointless if the culture does not change.
When we talk about innovation, companies immediately associate it with adopting new technologies, agile methodologies, and creative workspaces. If innovation were that, becoming innovative would be easy.
The best example that a beautiful space does not make an innovative company is startups themselves, whose first office is always a makeshift room.
The environment can — and indeed should — reflect the company's culture. A good example is Amazon, which repurposes doors as desktop surfaces: a symbol of financial conservatism. Or Google, designed in the image of the Stanford University dormitories that were the reference point for founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at the time.
An interesting fact: in Silicon Valley, the rise in ping pong table sales is directly proportional to the increase in startup investment.