Nurturing Culture

Nurturing corporate culture is like baking a cake. The best managers need to focus on their essence, select the right ingredients in the right quantities, mix together with a touch of élan and bake them with brio at the right heat. Get it right and it all rises together. Get the culture wrong and the whole thing falls apart. Read the findings of our report.

We spoke to 30 leaders in organisations across the globe about nurturing culture in transformation. Now more than ever, business leaders need to consider their culture and act decisively if they find it wanting. The business case is just too strong to leave it to chance.

Engaging employees is often acknowledged as important but too many leaders just do not know where to start. Others rely on tired approaches that, at best, seem like lip service and at worst actively turn their people off. Younger workers often want different things from a traditional career and ways of operating are changing; employees are devolving decisions and employers are increasingly exploring ways of letting them become self-managed. Such fundamental changes increase the need for a strong, cohesive culture.

In the modern world, the shared purpose and values are what bind it all together. We spoke to top business leaders about nurturing their organisations’ cultures through change and to our surprise these captains of industry often turned to cooking analogies to define a topic that is notoriously difficult to pin down, and harder to get right.