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Excellence Foresight with Nancy Nouaimeh
Welcome to Excellence Foresight, the podcast that guides you on the journey to building top-performing, sustainable, and future-ready teams and organizations. We explore how to plan for excellence, dive into the latest trends, and share practical insights for achieving success in today’s rapidly changing world.
Our mission? To fast-track your journey to excellence. It's a challenge, but with the right strategies and understanding of unique organizational cultures, it's achievable.
In each episode, I’ll share insights from my 24 years of experience in diverse, multicultural settings. Plus, we’ll have inspiring guests sharing their stories and the lessons they've learned in their own quests for excellence. Whether you’re a leader or a team member, this podcast is your roadmap to success, helping you and your organization thrive by embracing best practices and future-focused thinking.
Excellence Foresight with Nancy Nouaimeh
Your tips to design a Culture of Excellence
What if creating a culture of excellence could be your organization's secret to sustained success and adaptability? On today's episode of the Excellence Foresight Podcast, we discuss the critical components of designing such a culture—from establishing a compelling vision to implementing and maintaining practices that ensure long-term organizational effectiveness. We'll provide actionable insights into why a shared vision, inclusive environment, and human-centric principles are non-negotiable for any organization aiming to thrive now and in the future.
Join us as we tackle the essential questions: Why is shaping a culture of excellence crucial for your organization today? What does a culture of excellence look like, and how can you design one that fits your unique organizational needs? We'll share experiences that highlight the importance of being forward-looking and anticipatory. Learn about the transformative power of fostering new ideas, innovation, and strategies that keep your organization agile and relevant. This episode is your blueprint for cultivating a culture that excels both now and in the years to come.
Hello and welcome to the Excellence Foresight Podcast. Today is about how to design your culture of excellence, and we're going to explore together how to create a culture that drives organizational effectiveness and success. Now, changing your organization's culture can improve its performance, so here is how to do that. Dreaming of a bright future starts with designing a culture of excellence. Many companies and CEOs are interested in this topic because it's a powerful way to achieve breakthrough organizational effectiveness.
Speaker 1:A culture of excellence is, by definition, extraordinary. Creating such a culture requires three key steps First, a strong vision of what's possible. Second, a plan to set that vision in motion. And third, practices to sustain it continuously once it's established. While we can measure and define culture at any point, it's dynamic and evolves over time. This evolving nature means culture can be designed. The concept of culture by design emphasizes that culture stems from an organization's articulated values and how effectively those values are expressed daily by its people. Every organization has a culture, whether deliberately designed or left to chance. We can choose to shape our culture or let it develop on its own.
Speaker 1:Now, today's podcast is divided into four parts answering these four questions. Why shaping a culture of excellence? To start with, what does a culture of excellence look like and how to effectively design a culture of excellence. And question number four is how to assess if you have the right focus on culture as a leader. So let us deep dive into today's episode and start with the first element why shaping a culture of excellence Now? Why culture is important? You might be asking yourself this question. Culture is crucial for the organization's present and future and during any transition phase that your company might be going through. Have you ever faced obstacles when trying to achieve something within your team, department or organization? Often these obstacles are related to how people accept change and behave around that change. A culture of excellence can overcome these hurdles.
Speaker 1:I came across an insightful quote while preparing for this episode and I would like to share it with you. A culture of excellence is a conspiracy to excel, a commitment to be excellent, and I like this quote. Excellence is a way of being and thinking, it's a mindset and it's all about people. In our Excellence Foresight podcast, we focus on what's important for organizations and teams to excel now and sustain that excellence in the future, and culture in this is really key. As we move into the future, especially with advancements in AI, it becomes very important to promote a culture of excellence, and this is really critical. So here are the factors that promote such a culture. We can really think about them A shared vision, goals and practices. An inclusive and collaborative environment. Clearly stated principles for alignment you need to have principles that's going to guide that alignment within your organization. Encouragement of new thinking, ideas, innovation, creativity and experimentation. Human centricity and a focus on the well-being of people. We talk more and more about the well-being of people, supporting them to fulfill their potential.
Speaker 1:Now the second question what does a culture of excellence look like? There isn't a one fit for all culture of excellence. The nature of the organization usually impacts what the culture of excellence looks like and how it should be developed. And I go back to the concept of culture by design. It's about finding the most effective way to fulfill the organization's vision through its people and their behaviors. As organizations change over time, so does their culture. A commitment to excellence usually requires continuous evaluation, adjustment of the culture to meet changing needs.
Speaker 1:Now, a focus on a culture of excellence allows organizations to be forward-looking, anticipatory rather than just reactive. Not many of us feel that we are in reactive environments, in reactive organizations. I've had the experience lately in an environment where everybody was really just reactive. No one is taking any initiatives, no one is doing anything new. They just wait for the boss to tell them what to do or a problem to happen to sort it out. Do we want this in the future? Being preemptive is a real differentiator for organizations that use future foresight, for example, to remain relevant and agile. And we don't all of us have to go to future foresight, but we need to really be able to look at the future and what we want that future to look like for the organization, and how the people should be reacting now and developing this organization to make sure that they remain successful in the future.
Speaker 1:Now to design a culture especially if leaders understand how culture design works, they can focus on generating cohesion, managing change and embedding excellence throughout the organization. Now the key questions that we could ask it's what difference will this new culture make for my organization? How will it contribute to staff and organizational success? And this is where the design part is what culture do I need to have in my organization and what it should look like? Now, leaders play a crucial role in establishing a culture of excellence, and especially when you talk about culture by design. Leaders need to design that culture Now.
Speaker 1:The Shingo model shows us how principles, when followed, help establish such a culture. Leadership commitment is essential in this. You cannot do culture, or culture of excellence or culture transformation if you don't have leadership commitment. When leaders stand in shared commitment, vision, partnership and mutual trust, anything is possible for that organization. It all starts from there. Now I would like to share with you some of the cultural styles that maybe you know already. In one of the Harvard Business Review articles published in 2018, they listed eight cultural styles caring, purpose, learning, enjoyment, results, authority, safety and order and they looked at the advantages and disadvantages of these cultures. Results came top first and caring was top end, and I would translate this into caring and focusing on people will get you the results you need to achieve, and that's pretty true, and that's what we teach in the Shingo model and that's why we say people first. Culture is a winning culture, so you need definitely to focus on your people to get to results. Now this takes me to the third question how to effectively design a culture of excellence, and here are some of the tips for establishing a culture of excellence which I really recommend you to start thinking of and looking at how you can use them in your organization.
Speaker 1:First, it's important, if you want to design a culture of excellence, to work within your current culture. Build on existing cultural characteristics rather than attempting major overhauls. This is one of the mistakes that people do they want to change their culture completely. There are certain things in your culture that might be working well, those ones you might want to keep. Second change behaviors. First, behavioral change can lead to mental shifts. Focus on how to change the actions of your people, their behaviors. Third focus on critical behaviors. You can't do everything at the same time. Identify a few important behaviors that will have a significant impact on your culture. Focus your design around those behaviors.
Speaker 1:Number four leverage informal networks and leaders. And as I continue working with organizations, I now notice how much is important and how powerful are informal networks. Leverage those informal networks and those informal leaders. Deploy authentic informal leaders to support cultural changes. You need them. You need your informal networks. You need your informal leaders. Deploy authentic informal leaders to support cultural changes. You need them. You need your informal networks. You need your informal leaders. They are influentials in your organization. Leverage them. Number five engage former leaders. Now we talk about informal leaders. We should not forget the former leaders. Use both of them to drive change. Your former leaders are also a very good channel for that. Number six link behaviors to business objectives. You can't just create behaviors if it doesn't going to serve your business objectives. Ensure that behaviors align with your organizational goals.
Speaker 1:Number seven show impact quickly. Now we talk a lot about quick wins. If quick wins are looked at in the real value that they provide, they are important. Use pilots and quick wins to maintain momentum. It doesn't mean you're going to get just results for the moment and just make sure that you're ticking a box. You want to get quick wins to keep that momentum going on. You need to keep people motivated. Show them results, give them quick wins for keep that momentum going on. You need to keep people motivated. Show them results, give them quick wins for them to see the outcome, the fruit of what they're doing, and that will keep them motivated.
Speaker 1:Number eight promote cross-organizational initiatives. A lot of changes happen when we have those cross-functional committees and work and collaborations between departments and business units. They are really very, very powerful. Spread successful ideas and behaviors across departments. Look at initiatives where you can have people work together, collaborate together and let them drive that change and that transformation and, once that is happening, also promote it across the organization. Institutionalize new behaviors, integrate them into the organization's formal structures. Once you have new behaviors, make sure that they are across your organization. They're made formally. And now we in the Shingo model, we teach about designing systems that generate that positive behavior that we want to see, and that's how we institutionalize new behaviors.
Speaker 1:Manage cultural changes over time. That's tip number 10. Continuously evaluate and adjust the culture as needed. It's a dynamic. The cultures are dynamic, the cultures are really. Now tip number 10. Manage cultural changes over time. Continuously evaluate and adjust the culture as needed. We say design your culture and the needs will evolve over time. So make sure you adjust your culture accordingly.
Speaker 1:Now, as a leader, how to assess if you have the right focus on culture. Here's a self-assessment exercise that you can go through as a leader to evaluate if you have that right focus on culture. These are simple questions but very deep ones to look at. How much quality time you spend on thinking about your culture? Do you have a clear understanding around what has made or makes your business successful and how to link it to your culture? How vibrant is a discussion around culture in your organization, and are you a champion of that discussion or are you leaving it to the mid-level or supervisory level? How much do you engage your middle managers in the game? And there's plenty of articles these days about the role of middle manager and that some organizations are missing to focus on that middle manager role and level when they talk about culture, when they talk about transformation and change, do you measure your culture? Do you have anything in place that tells you what does your culture look like? Do you hire or promote your employees, keeping in mind tomorrow's culture? Do you hire, promote the right people? I've seen leaders who made a great difference championing their culture by starting to ask these right questions.
Speaker 1:I believe in challenging the status quo, and that starts from leadership, and when we focus on designing the right culture, we should start by asking the right questions. The right questions will lead to the right design. By asking the right questions, the right questions will lead to the right design. Now, in conclusion, and as we come to the end of this episode, it's important to know that, maintaining a culture of excellence, leaders must understand and manage cultural changes. They should start by understanding the existing culture and plan to guide the organization towards its future goals, and if you are a leader, that's your role Now. With this, we come to the end of this episode on designing a culture of excellence. Thank you for tuning in and join us now next time for more insights on fostering excellence within your organization. Until then, keep striving for excellence. Thank you for listening.
