vital people vital enterprise -
The Inner Life of Teams
Culture, that hard to define, intangible and yet deep shaper of all we achieve and create in organisations. The meshed views, values, knowledge and experience of each contributor to the group. In other words, the inner life of the team.
Organisational Performance
Cultural fields exert powerful influences across organisations and have a fundamental bearing on performance. The quality of thinking and relating directly informs the quality of achievement. Generating healthy culture is a vital leadership capability and underpins sustainable organisational performance.
Astute leaders working to unlock the power of their organisation’s culture:
- understand the vital connection between capability and performance. They grapple
with how to effectively invest in people and culture, not why. Individual and functional
training alone, no longer delivers superior results. Leading and working in groups,
strategic team development and healthy inter-
dependent relationships underpin high performance.
- thrive in complexity and ambiguity. Culture development demands an evolving integration of personalities and contexts; cultural principles abound yet there are no formulaic solutions; and counter intuitively, any desired change already exists as a seed in your organisation. The art and challenge of cultural leadership is to precipitate these potentials into tangible results.
- know organisations often become culture bound and miss opportunities for change and
growth. Means of renewal may come from an external catalyst. Stimulation by an independent
resource, at its most potent, acts like pearl-
producing grit in an oyster. Leveraging the grit, their unique style and the business environment, leaders create sustainable success.
- seek challenging and complementary partnerships. A natural diversity of cultural practice and practitioners exist. Engaging partners where creative tension and robust exchanges flourish, will sharpen individual and team performance.
Strategic investment in organisational culture embeds collaborative attitudes; builds confidence for decision making and accountability; produces clear thinking; encourages rich and energising conversations; fosters emotional intelligence; promotes healthy growth and delivers success on many fronts.
Thorin Munro
Sydney, Australia.
