Conseguir que los líderes apoyen el cambio de cultura
RECAP
Presented by Chris Gomez, BVC CEO, and Anita Verster, Anita Verster and Associates. Moderated by Christine Cervenka, BVC Director of Marketing.
Chris and Anita joined our audience to discuss leadership and the case for culture. Our inspiration for our topic was inspired by recent headlines:
Amazon AWS CEO: Quit if You Don’t Want to Return to Office - Reuters October 18, 2024
PwC to start tracking working locations of all UK employees - The Guardian September 5, 2024
Unilever to scale back environmental and social pledges - The Guardian, April 19, 2024
“The backlash is real”: Behind DEI’s rise and fall - Axios, April 2, 2024
We are reading pertinent and consistent themes in the media that point to a misalignment between culture, leadership, and operational systems. As we consider these stories and how organizations will navigate these external pressures, we see all levels of the organization affected. Whether it's a return to office, how to build an inclusive workforce, or what's the role of ESG in my organization, the constant thread throughout them is that organizations are human systems deeply connected to culture.
We know that underlying systems connect to the culture and the people within your organization, but how do we get leadership buy-in around culture measurement and change?
Sometimes, we need to highlight how the organizational processes might be contradictory to the culture and negatively impact their bottom line. BVC recently worked with a client where work/life balance was identified as a top value. However, in reviewing their systems, it was evident that their work/life balance value contradicted their employee policies, and their executives revealed they felt that the value had overridden profitability.
Anita shared that leaders often know that culture is the vehicle to get them to a business goal; they just aren’t certain how to best utilize culture for change. While the headlines are saying there is a disconnect, we attribute much of the focus is a result of post-COVID changes. Culture was focused on survival during our COVID years. In 2025, we recognize that well-being is important, but we can expand our awareness and recognize that traditional business concerns, like market share, productivity, and profit are also valid concerns. Current times call for approaching culture as a system that is not siloed in human resources.
We work with organizations by listening to and meeting leaders where they are to help evaluate and advise as to where they can go with a holistic, systemic approach to culture. Helping leaders see the link between culture and the “real stuff” helps them know that culture enables them to reach their objectives and goals. We can treat the whole system by linking the outcomes of culture to the hard objectives and working with leadership behaviors. Understanding leadership challenges and their perspective is key; we seek to understand leadership pain points to ensure we are speaking their language to move in the desired direction. We embrace the fact that we are at the service of the organization to help them reach their North Star.
In summary
Culture impacts the bottom line.
Connecting culture to business strategy creates that impact.
Let leaders define what success looks like.
To conclude, we provided some Data-Driven Insights from BVC’s data:
Low Cultural Entropy® is highly correlated with high company engagement.
When employees’ personal values are primarily on Foundational Values (as opposed to Evolution Values, and Impact Values), established businesses have lower sales growth and ROE (return on equity).
BVC has uncovered four key value themes that drive a significant, positive impact on the ROE when shared by people and the culture.
To watch our full webinar on Gaining Leadership Buy-In for Culture Change sign up here.
Our advisory can help your organization ensure that your values, systems, and business goals are aligned for your best success. Please reach out to learn more.
