Culture

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SMBs might consider three main questions that warrant consideration for business culture in the Digital Age:

1. People: Does the firm have the right people with the right capabilities on the bus? How (and how much) do people engage with the firm and with one another, and what methods are used to do so?  

2. Alignment for today: Are the people aligned and focused on the right mission to produce results today (which ideally should revolve around serving customers)?  

3. Mobility for tomorrow: Do the people, priorities, and processes promote sufficient learning and mobility that the business can adapt to changes in the company and market?  

For SMBs, culture is typically one of their strengths. However, efficiency and adaptability are often opposing choices, and the third consideration – “mobility for tomorrow” – is often a shortcoming which need to be addressed.  When planning a strategy for the Digital Age, we focus on several cultural elements including speed and agility, continuous improvement, "VC thinking" and failure tolerance, accountability and empowerment, and upskilling.

We use our “Barbell Model” to describe our approach to transformational strategies, where culture and bottom-up change plays an important role:

1) Leaders must drive change. Some levers will require tight coordination and careful planning, and transformation as a whole will require both traditional and digital pieces. Because of this, leaders will need to plan and monitor execution of a set of initiatives, and also make sure that these important actions don’t give way to urgent day-to-day fires. This top-down set of planned, coordinated initiatives are represented by the left side of the barbell.

2) Leaders must also not bottleneck progress, and digital transformation is simply too complex for leaders to prescribe themselves. Rather, they must enlist the ideas and talents of their people and enable & empower them to continuously improve the business. They need a culture that supports this, encouraging people to take initiative achieving the proper balance between things like accountability and failure tolerance. This bottom-up set of unplanned, opportunistic initiatives are represented by the right side of the barbell. 

3) The bar itself – the connection between these levers – represents the Agile Strategy Program. The program ensures that the leadership team stays in lock-step, helps them to orient and mobilize people toward a shared future-state vision, and systematically plan and execute strategic initiatives in a synergistic, connected, and synchronized way. 

4) Leaders can “lift” the barbell, providing a motive force via change management efforts. Effective change management allows the business to harness its human capital, enable its employees to generate and implement continuous improvement, and adapt to the speed of digital by embracing the right mindset and becoming more agile.  Leaders must be more conscious today than ever about employing tested and proven techniques for moving the business and its people forward.   This is especially true in today's challenging labor markets, where engagement has become a more pressing concern for employers.