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>success stories What culture patterns lead to breakthroughs in customer loyalty?
What culture patterns lead to breakthroughs in customer loyalty? Our client, a renowned retail organization, has a track record of being a leader in its marketplace and is frequently listed as one of the best places to work. Customer loyalty, however, was not at the level needed to break ahead of competitors. A major investment in communicating strategic direction, training personnel, improving tools and systems and installing structural changes had been underway, yet customer loyalty ratings were disappointing. Our starting point to find the culture levers for improving customer loyalty was to compare the culture as it played out in behaviors and practices in retail sites with high and low customer loyalty ratings. Our analysis revealed that the hard work of communicating the strategy was paying off with strong alignment at the senior level and readiness at the store level. Culture pattern comparisons revealed specific differences that, if addressed, could unleash the potential of leaders and their staff. Site observations brought into sharper detail the way practices and behaviors were playing out during a typical day in high customer loyalty sites. From this rich detail, very specific interventions can be planned that will accelerate the path to breakthrough levels of customer loyalty.. Are we ready for an acquisition? This award-winning professional services firm is acclaimed within its industry and recognized nationally for its people management practices. It has invested significantly in developing talented, empowering leaders and creating an environment for high performance. The business had grown steadily and an option of more aggressive growth through acquisition was now under consideration. Recent changes to benefits had met with surprising resistance. We used the Culture-Strategy Fit Profile™ to assess the cultural patterns in operation and what the implications of these were. A key finding was that culture strengths were beginning to act as a double-edged sword. For example, the belief that the firm had established the behaviors and practices that guaranteed award-winning results was leading to less internal adaptation and external focus than would be expected. With openness to change low, there was high risk that changes to practices would be resisted and that appreciation of another firm's approaches would be low. The value of an acquisition, unless it was an equally award-winning firm, would be wrung out within months. Recommendations for improving organizational adaptation were provided and were installed into daily operations. One year later the firm's Culture-Strategy Fit Profile has had improvement not just in internal adaptation, but across all culture dimensions. It remains a firm that is able to attract the best in its business and is more ready now to consider growth through acquisition. Are we living our core values? A start-up retail company had articulated its vision and core values and was intent on creating an organization that made a difference to its customers, its staff and the world. Wanting to ensure that the company was living its values and shaping a foundation culture to deliver its strategy, the firm selected a customized Culture Snapshot as a means to gather perspectives and assess progress to date. In customizing a Culture Snapshot for the company, we could provide a low cost means to baseline culture patterns important to their success that would enable them to track culture development over time.How do we address culture ‘drag'? A privately-held transportation company had acquired several businesses in rapid succession over six years. The business financials were very positive and there were substantial opportunities for growth in new markets. However, major initiatives were slow to get off the ground, operational challenges were mounting, morale appeared very low and turnover rates were increasing. Both the Founder and new President identified that the current culture was holding the organization back and wanted to know the cause of culture ‘drag' and levers for change. The Culture-Strategy Fit Profile™ was able to identify the causal factors for the way the culture was operating so that the executive team could put its attention on some of the foundational culture patterns that needed strengthening. When they were able to see that the culture patterns were a logical outcome of fast growth and entrepreneurial leadership, a staged path to culture change could be developed. Despite feeling that there was strong agreement on strategic direction, a CEO and President were surprised when their perspectives on strategic priorities were dramatically different. Use of the Strategic Alignment Snapshot enabled them to identify and then explore these differences. A comparison of their responses to the rest of the executive team illustrated how lack of clarity was impacting alignment at the vice president level. With this information, the CEO and President together undertook a strategy clarification process that would engage the vice presidents and enable the organization to better focus resources.
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Culture-Strategy Fit Inc. is a leading organizational culture consulting firm conducting ground-breaking work in leveraging culture to drive strategy and performance. Our proprietary Culture Snapshot™ provides a rapid assessment of culture patterns and the way they are operating to support or impede future success. Our culture assessment services support consulting firms and organizations in the creation of a highly effective culture change path. | |
