Culture is a critical determinant of both success and longevity for corporations of all sizes. A key component of building an organisational culture lies in the behaviours detailing how information flows around an organisation.
Experienced CEO’s promote information flow when building organisation culture
In the third episode of the culture de-cooded podcast, CEO of the World Gold Council Davit Tait discusses how he ensure information flows around the business:
“I developed a document that I wrote every two weeks, which is now some 30 pages long that people could, if they took the time to read the document, would understand every facet of the business. And the more you read it, the more you understand. If you choose not to read it, you’re excluding yourself from the ongoing messages”
This highlights David’s explicit effort to ensure information flows around the organisation in order to unite and inform all employees at The World Gold Council. This behaviour aims to improve the level of trust and alignment his employees experience. As a result of this CEO’s conscious effort to enable better information flow, he provides his team with an opportunity to be more aligned on their business objective, purpose and strategy as a result, which promotes organisational success. In addition, once employees feel “in the loop” they will feel valued, and levels of perceived psychological safety and engagement will rise as an outcome, making for not only a productive more aligned workforce, but a happier one.
Empowering managers to build organisational culture from within
Much like David Tait’s conscious effort to share business critical information not just with his board and c-suite but throughout all levels of management, it is crucial that all staff experience the unhindered and free circulation of information. Feedback, guidance and authentic support should be encouraged when building organisational culture in order to empower all managers and staff. Effective communication and transparency will liberate employees to use their initiative in their role, swiftly respond to change and participate with confidence in the building of organisational culture. After all, you can’t expect teams to know how to act if they’ve not been told how to act.
This is why Culture15 gives all managers the access and power to view and take action to shape and build their organisational culture. The information our culture measurement platform provides, adds value to a businesses strategy, by providing actionable insight in to the behaviours that employees experience in their every day role. The Value our platform provides can only truly be unlocked when managers are given access to the platform. When managers are empowered to take charge of their culture through Culture15, they can design bespoke initiatives to target specific teams or behaviours and really help build their culture. This is a direct example of how information flow can promote and help to build organisational culture, because without the flow and transparency of data, managers who use Culture15 would be in the dark.
Information flow promotes collaboration and resilience
When information flows freely around an organisation, from the decision makers down to the wider employees , staff will be better educated on business critical information and strategy. This is a competitive advantage, as having employees fully informed, enables them to better adapt to change. Strong information flow processes promote employee resilience which is built on this shared understanding of the company’s direction.
Furthermore, when the behaviours that show up every day in the organisation are consistent and communicated explicitly throughout an organisation, teams will find cross-departmental collaboration much easier as employees are more likely to be on the same page regarding ways of working. This improves collaboration, reduces friction and will make a workforce far more efficient.
In conclusion, it could be argued that effective information flow is the cornerstone of building organisation culture, supporting key behaviours such as transparency, trust, collaboration, adaptability, and resilience.
Culture15 is your complete toolkit for tracking culture change. CEOs and Exec Teams at world-leading organisations use Culture15 analytics to ensure success by aligning their culture with what they need to execute their strategy. If you’d like to find out how to define the culture you need, diagnose the culture you have and close the gap, talk to our team.
