Lessons from the News Of The World Saga.......

The recent revelations about the behaviour of News International, The Met police et al reminded me of importance of creating and managing a corporate culture.

Culture is the way we do thing here. It is enshrined in the values, hopefully established by the top team, which then 'ensures' people behave in the way the organisation prefers.

Values are often thought to be the 'soft' part of business strategy, woolly and not important. So many organisations prefer to focus on profit, sales, EBITDA, cash etc. Actually, values are hard in two ways, hard to think through and hard to embed, but if you get them right; they create the profits the business desires. This is culture as an asset.

Typical business values are:

- Treat people with dignity and respect
- Honesty and integrity in all our dealings
- Delight our customers etc.

So what we see in the current debacle is a culture by default, one that was clearly either not designed or managed effectively.

Culture that does not serve the business is a liability which can drain the balance sheet and even kill a business.

So what are your business values and are they an asset or a liability?

Business Alignment and Attunement

Increasingly in my consulting work with clients I have become to realise that my approach is helping them to get alignment and attunement in their business.

Alignment is the golden thread of the link between customer problems, my client's solutions and then internally the strategy, plan, individual objectives and time spent on the priorities. When things are in line and connected the business usually succeeds.

Key alignment tests are:

- What is the strategy?
- How do your objectives link to it?
- How much time do you spend on delivering the objectives?

Answering these questions is the key to productively, efficiency and effectiveness. This is the head or rational part or what we do.

Attunement is the heart or how we do it.

The key tests are:

- Does the business have a stated culture, values and ethos?
- How far are they shared across the business and are they non-negotiable?
- Can people deduce the values from the way the business behaves?

So a recipe for success is getting alignment and attunement in your business. How does yours measure up?

The Entrepreneurial Potential Report

It has never really been possible to objectively assess Entrepreneurial Potential in people - until now!

Professor Peter Saville of Saville Consulting and I developed the Entrepreneurial Potential Report to enable individuals and organisations to assess their entrepreneurial talent.

Peter discusses the Entrepreneurial Potential Report in this podcast http://www.savilleconsulting.com/podcast.aspx using our friend Ajaz Ahmed, who started and grew Freeserve, as a case example.

If you would like to assess yourself or your people contact Lynn Bradshaw lynn@davidhalluk.com