It’s been said that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” While I won’t argue against the importance of a high-performance culture, the fact is that organizations need both. Let’s take them one at a time, starting with culture.

A recent Harvard Business Review article offers some sobering data. According to author and Managing Editor Gretchen Gavett, research shows that 72% of companies that started “culture improvement” initiatives showed little or no improvement in levels of employee trust, engagement, or retention one year later. While it could be argued that culture improvement takes more than one year (true enough), it isn’t asking much to show at least some improvement twelve months on. What’s going on here?

There are many reasons for organizational improvement efforts to lose steam and fizzle out. These missed opportunities carry more lasting impact than first felt. The more leadership rolls out new initiatives that stall, the more the next “flavor of the month’ will be met with luke-warm enthusiasm or worse.

How to get this right? As with any improvement program, a good place to start is to define with clarity where you are now and where you would like to go (often described as “current state” and “desired future state”). This basic essential step is often overlooked in many improvement plans, especially when it comes to culture. It need not be the case.

One of the most effective tools for measuring culture is the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI) by Human Synergistics. A 120-item survey provides a solid, reliable, and time-tested way to assess the current state of culture in any organization. That done, a target for improvement can be identified and a plan put in place with timelines and resources allocated for implementation.

It is recommended to begin this exercise by having members of the Senior Leadership Team complete the OCI first. Chart and discuss the results. You may be surprised at what you find.

The best way to set about any improvement process is to determine where you are now and where you’d like to go. This is true for moving organization culture forward.

Even the best strategy will flounder without a high-performance culture. The latter is not possible without the former.

To learn more, contact me at joe@ajstrategy.com or visit my website at ajstrategy.com.