Creating a Healthy Organization through Cultural Interventions

Sustained organizational health is among the most powerful assets an organization can build. The research is clear, healthy companies generate total returns to shareholders three times greater than those of unhealthy companies. Managing performance and health is key in shifting the organizations culture. Performance is about delivering business results in the here and now. Health is about the ability to do it year in, year out. The two are not the same. Some companies have neither, others have just one. The ultimate competitive advantage lies in having and sustaining both, performance and health.

I was asked to work with a large multibillion O&G organization that was delivering on 23% of its performance targets, operating far below industry standards. The workforce was 4500 employees plus 2000 contractors who were frustrated and lacked motivation to change, nor did they see their performance as a problem. Attrition rates were high, far higher than their competitors. It was a challenging financial situation with declining shareholder support, ultimately, they were at risk of selling the business. The organization was lacking vision, motivation and any sort of corporate identity or sense of purpose. With plenty of persistence, leaders spending time on shared behaviours and getting everyone to work together was the secret to building a culture that became the organizations competitive advantage in the industry.

• Conduct comprehensive organization health capability diagnostic- uncover root causes focusing on corporate culture, leadership, processes, org structure, strategy & business context

• Understand the health across the organization and different demographic groups

• Align on the emerging themes and health priorities with top team

• Generate the case for change and organizational strategy/purpose

• Conduct top team alignment sessions

• Design company wide health initiatives, interventions and underpinning creditable change plans

• Embed performance & health priorities into business practices. Strengthen organizational health capabilities

• Create a movement, build compelling cascaded change communications

• Engage and leverage change agents within the organization

• Share learnings and celebrate successes

• Embed health practices deep into the organization & progress tracking

• Deep mindset and behavioural interventions to create ownership at all levels in organization

• Create nudges and habits that sustain the change