28 Nov 2022

How to achieve high performance through culture

The highest-performing organisations in our study were the ones that were best at communicating. In fact, communication was where we saw the biggest difference between the best and the rest. That’s surprising when you think that most people report they’re overwhelmed by information at work. But high performers were communicating about something specific: how to satisfy customers’ needs.

In our final webinar of Customer Centricity Month, Giles Colborne, CEO at cxpartners and Alberta Soranzo, Global Head of Customer Experience at Vodafone Business, looked at both the People and Communications dimensions of our Customer Centricity Model. Combining these dimensions, they discussed how to build a happier, more fulfilled team that produces better results for customers.

The highest-performing organisations in our Customer Centricity study were the ones that were best at communicating. In fact, communication was where we saw the biggest difference between the best and the rest.

Everyone in those organisations seemed to be good at communicating. Management made everyone aware of strategic goals. Front-line teams kept management informed about what was going on. And teams were good at sharing information with their peers, too.

That’s surprising when you think that most people report they’re overwhelmed by information at work.

But high performers were communicating about something specific: how to satisfy customers’ needs.

High-performing organisations had about twice as many roles dedicated to gathering, distilling or sharing information about customers. Those organisations are ‘learning organisations’ that are dedicated to learning and sharing what their customers want.

In other words, they have created a culture of customer centricity.

Culture emerges from values

Culture is an essential tool in managing and leading organisations. It’s about giving everyone in the organisation a sense of what they should do, even in completely new and unexpected situations.

That sense of how to behave arises from a shared belief. What does success look like? What behaviours will bring success? What behaviours will keep it safe from danger?

If you’re trying to design culture, you need to start with those sorts of questions.

Building a culture

A few years ago, cxpartners was brought in to help an organisation rethink how it created digital services.

We began by using a culture mapping technique called Competing Values Framework to visualise the gap between the culture they had, and the culture they wanted to have.

This showed the organisation was hierarchical. There was a lot of focus on the chain of command, which meant that decisions were slow, not necessarily informed by what was going on on the ground, and very target driven.

It also showed the teams wanted to see something more devolved and more focused on outcomes.

This opened up a conversation and allowed us to start working with stakeholders and teams to ask what the behaviours that will bring about these sorts of changes are and how they would act every day.

We used that discussion to agree on a list of behaviours that would bring about success.

A 'culture mapping' X and Y axis. The X axis ranges from 'internal focus integration' to 'external focus differentiation'. The Y axis ranges from 'flexibility and discretion' to 'stability and control. In-between 'internal focus integration' and 'flexibility and discretion' is a box reading 'devolved management'. In-between 'external focus differentiation' and 'flexibility and discretion' is a box reading 'outcomes driven'.

We used that to identify how we could support those new behaviours in each of our five dimensions of customer centricity:

  • People: We reviewed job descriptions, personal goals set for employees, and how people are evaluated and judged.
  • Facilities: We wanted to create a new space, which would give people physical cues to say that ‘things are going to be done differently from now on and in this space’. We set up an entirely new office, made it look and feel different, and ensured there were many collaboration spaces and places to put stuff on the wall, which hadn’t been allowed before. We ensured there were facilities to run their own user research.
  • Processes: We created new delivery processes that reflected those values.
  • Governance: We trained stakeholders in new ways of interacting with teams.
  • Communication: We looked at everything from a routine around standup to how they reported progress, how that team talked about its successes, and how to explain the changes it was bringing about.

In other words, we ran a complete program to reset that team’s culture around the goals we identified with them and to make everyone more customer-centric.

Within a matter of weeks of launch, we transformed the digital team’s output and performance.

Building a culture involves looking at all five dimensions of customer centricity - People, Facilities, Process, Governance and Communication.

Maintaining culture

Every organisation has two cultures. A spoken culture – what it says it does; and an acted culture – what it actually does.

Those things are never exactly the same, but you want them to overlap. In a lot of organisations, though, they drift apart over time.

If there’s no overlap then you get what organisational expert Dave Grey calls the ‘bullshit gap’ – when organisations say they want one thing but reward another. This leads to cynicism and low morale in your team.

To stop things from drifting apart, you need to be able to call out the difference between the spoken and acted cultures.

So part of any successful change program is embedding a clear, safe way to collect and present feedback, making sure people are heard, and ensuring that the people being called out don’t feel threatened and reject the feedback.

The customer centred culture

So what does success look like to the high performers, and what are the behaviours that drive their culture?

The critical thing we heard from the organisations at the top of their game was the deep-seated belief that they win by delivering customer value.

It meant that they were prepared to invest in the right roles, they were able to collect the right data, understand it, and share it. Ultimately that kind of situational awareness led to their ability to make the right decisions, and adapt quickly when things changed.

Culture in practice – Vodafone

Taking ownership of change

I asked Alberta, ‘when consultants are invited into large organisations to support change programmes, what happens after the consultants leave?’

Alberta explained that culture can be designed, but for people to embrace any change, they must feel a certain degree of ownership. When the organisation has the chance to participate in making decisions, to be part of discovery, of workshops, and of helping to shape the program of change, the impact is much more substantial.

Once the consultants leave, it’s up to leadership to model the change you want to see. Unless they embody those values straight away, every effort will fall apart. Furthermore, leadership needs to model those newly defined values with consistency and commitment; otherwise, others will assume that the old ways are still ok. If allowances are made for particular groups, it will dilute the meaning of the change and the credibility of leadership.

The role of the consultant

Often, people working in an organisation have a clear idea of what works and what doesn’t. The role of the consultant is to help them determine a path for going from A to B, and to help them identify who will support their role model to lead along that path and who will champion these values. The effort needs to happen at every level of the organisation.

The consultant’s role is also to help them determine how they can preserve the foundational intent of the organisation. Without these beacons of intentionality, it’s easy to lose your sense of self, purpose, and value. These internal signposting efforts need to be supported by clear vision goals, with customer value being the ultimate goal that reinforces the change you want to make.

Demonstrating success

Sometimes, senior organisation members are vested in the status quo because they’ve become successful by learning how those cultures, subcultures, systems and ecosystems work. This makes it hard to create change because change directly threatens the status quo and their potential future well-being. Alberta said she has previously approached this challenge by demonstrating practical value. She advised finding a corner of the organisation and showing that this new approach or different way of doing things can be successful. Then it becomes contagious – everyone wants a little bit of the pixie dust.

Alberta told us that as a leader, the most important quality to have is courage. Leaders need the courage to take that leap of faith because change can be scary and risky.

Customer Centricity Month 2022

To find out how you can drive your customer centricity strategy forward, check out all four of the webinars that we held during Customer Centricity Month. Available to watch on demand here:

Learn more about How to achieve high performance through culture

Giles Colborne

Reach out to Giles Colborne

Director of Strategy

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