Your Company Culture and Customer-Centricity

Company culture has a significant influence on its corporate strategy. The fit between strategy and organisational culture is imperative to the overall effectiveness of a company, and any changes in a company’s strategy should therefore correspond with intentional and proactive changes in its organisational culture. Failure to do so may result in the unsuccessful execution of the company’s strategy, regardless of how promising it may seem. The successful execution of a strategy is most likely when it is aligned with, and supported by the culture of the company.

A company’s strategic actions can be expedited or impeded by its culture, which influences the behaviour of its employees towards the achievement of the company’s overall strategic objectives. It is therefore imperative that a company’s top management consider the organisation’s culture when the strategy is formulated, however great ideas and strong strategies are meaningless if activities at the lower levels of an organisation are different to what top management anticipates.

According to Szymanska (2016) the ability to introduce various theories and business models is necessary for the creation of a company’s competitive advantage, and cultural misalignment is a major factor for the low level of innovation implementation. Any gaps between the overriding culture of a company (from where the strategy is crafted) and where the strategy is executed (frontline employees) may be a result of disunited concurrence between company levels or poor leadership. 

Counterproductive cultural traits at frontline level negatively impact a company’s performance. The cultural mechanisms for aligning, constraining and regulating the actions, decisions, and behaviours of frontline employees will be lacking, and top management is unable to use traditions, beliefs, values, common bonds or behavioural norms to mobilise customer facing employees, who lack commitment towards executing the strategy crafted by top management. This weak culture provides little or no assistance to executing the company strategy because the frontline employees responsible for its execution do not buy in to the overriding culture of the company. In lieu of commitment, compensation incentives and other motivational mechanisms may be used to mobilise such customer facing employees, however such incentives may lead to unethical behaviour and short-termism in an attempt to achieve targets for monetary gain and job security, which is in direct violation of a company’s attempt to become customer-centric.

In order to minimise the gap between a company’s overriding culture and its subcultures, a diagnosis has to be made as to which aspects of the current culture and subcultures are not supportive of the strategy. Top management is then required to proactively ingrain and secure cultural norms across all departments of the organisation through:

1. Introducing recruitment screening that includes culture fit assessments across all departments.

2. Proactively introducing orientation programmes containing the company’s culture and history.

3. Ensuring that internal company communication initiatives are inclusive of all personnel, regardless of designation.

4. Frontline supervisors that are resisting the cultural change are to be replaced, and individuals that have actively displayed the anticipated behaviours are to be promoted.

5. An organisation’s leaders are responsible for reinforcing the existing culture of a company. Top management, line managers and frontline supervisors are to act as cultural role models, while providing continuous attention to the expected cultural traits and behaviours within their departments.

6. Job performance evaluations are to be expanded to all employees. Such evaluations are a primary human resource function, which play an integral part of the organisational culture and should include an assessment on the cultural behaviours anticipated throughout the company (Hofstetter & Harpaz, 2015).

7. Intermittent ceremonies are recommended to celebrate employees who actively display the company values.

As markets change, an adaptive culture is necessary for a company to remain competitive. Gunn (2008) explains that valuations indicate that investors take note of organisations that are adept at managing change, and according to Judy (2011) it is easier for a group that knows how to work together to carry out new strategies effectively. The challenge experienced by the top management of many companies is that poorly communicated changes have result in a change resistant subculture at customer facing levels within the organisation. This subculture is incompatible with the overall company strategy and the overriding company culture. A change of the problem subculture is therefore required. Competent leadership from top and middle management, as well as front line supervisors is recommended to make a compelling case for cultural change, implement new work practices and operating approaches, and the acceptance of, and support for strategic change.