IL Solutions
Culture Assessment & Transformation

While we do work with Fortune 1000 organizations to help them with their transformation initiatives, IL’s real “sweet spot” is working with small to mid-sized global entrepreneurial companies. Through our research as well as the interviews we have done with many of the top CEO’s in the world, we have discovered two main reasons why small to mid-sized entrepreneurial organizations fail to grow and, if they do grow, are challenged to sustain their growth:

#1: They underestimate the important role leadership plays in creating a strong culture; and
#2: They overestimate the importance of culture per se, while underestimating the importance of building and sustaining the kind of culture that supports the primary operating imperative of the business.

Our research indicates that most CEOs, owners and entrepreneurs appropriately focus their time and energy on creating differentiated products and services that have market demand. What really separates the most successful, entrepreneurial CEO’s and the organization’s they lead, however, is their hyper-focus and almost maniacal passion for creating and sustaining exceptional leadership at all levels along with building a strong culture. In many respects this pursuit and passion for leadership and culture becomes the real defining pillar in their organization even more so than the products and services they sell in the marketplace. The “best of the best” CEO’s and organizations absolutely understand, embrace, and live the belief that leadership, talent, and culture are the leading indicators to achieving and sustaining operating success. Yes, focusing on the products and services that serve a market need is important. Even more important, however, is having the right leadership and culture in place that ignites the right strategy and execution of that strategy—in support of the operating goals of the business.

Your organization’s culture represents the collective character, values, thoughts, emotions, beliefs and behaviors of your leaders and individual contributors. Your organization’s culture is a product of such factors as its’ history and how your leaders and individual contributors ascribe meaning and value to it as well as leadership style (legacy and current) which is then reflected in the creation and implementation of your organization’s values, vision, mission, purpose, strategy, structure and roles.

Employee engagement and company culture are related, but they aren’t the same thing. Unfortunately, many organizations lump engagement and company culture together and prevent themselves from deriving the full benefit of understanding and optimizing each.  Companies that lack a strong, vibrant culture may still have employees who like and are engaged in their work. Bigger issues like distrust or misalignment of goals can simmer underneath an engaged workforce (though they’re unlikely to remain engaged with work for long). On the other hand, organizations with energetic, inspiring cultures almost can’t help but have engaged employees. In fact, culture is a strong predictor of engagement and is the foundation of operational success. That’s why defining your organization’s path to the future must involve evaluation of both corporate culture and employee engagement.

There is no organization that exists in the world today that is not interested in getting better. Organizations that are effective, want to be more effective. Organizations that are lagging their competition want to be leading their competition. And organizations that are leading their market want to make sure they continue to lead and dominate their market.

Regardless of your organizations operating imperative, two things are certain based on our many decades of experience working with leaders and organizations all over the world–achieving and sustaining operating success in your organization will always be in direct proportion to how effectively your senior leaders: (1) create a culture that truly supports your most pressing operating imperative; and (2) continuously determining if you in fact have created this culture and, if not, quickly and decisively course-correcting to ensure this goal is met. These are the two most important jobs of a CEO, owner, entrepreneur, and their senior executive teams. 

The infographic below, Transforming Culture: The 6 Critical Steps, highlights the steps to help you and your organization successfully navigate your transformation challenges.

Whether your organization is a “market leader” or “laggard” is irrelevant. The need to transform will never end as all businesses are facing growing disruption from all angles. According to research by the Boston Consulting Group, 75% of business transformations flat-out fail, resulting in an organization’s decline, failure, or their eventual extinction. A big reason for their failure? CEO’s and senior leadership teams who were not as diligent as they needed to be in creating and transforming their culture in support of their operating goals. In fact, the biggest reason for their failure? A lack of leadership.

Speaking of bad leadership again, only 25% of organization’s who are considered “market leaders”, transform from a position of strength to sustain their position of strength, while 75% of “market leaders” currently are not engaged in positive and pre-emptive transformation efforts—which almost guarantees their eventual failure.