Gain a Competitive Edge by Cracking the Organizational Culture Code

Toxic cultures can ruin a company.

Positive cultures give companies a competitive edge, allowing them to achieve greater productivity, higher sales and superior profits. 

Why? Because culture affects employee well-being, customer loyalty, and company productivity. 

We Help You Build a Culture for Sustainable Success 

What keeps you up at night?  Worried about innovation? Attracting and retaining the best talent? The relentless pace of disruptive change? All of the above?

Whether your organization is large or small, long-established or a start-up, a positive organizational culture will help your company address all these concerns and more.

We can help you build a culture that will help you win in this competitive marketplace.

Remember: a positive organizational culture unlocks success.

Our 5-Step Process for Helping You Crack the Culture Code 

Miller Consultants has developed a 5-step process for helping you build a vibrant culture for competitive edge:

1. Getting to Know You 

We start by getting to know you, your company and what you are trying to achieve. Whether you are a senior leader over the entire company, over a part of the company or the leader of a team, we want to know what matters to you and to understand your hopes as well as your fears related to your business and the culture that you need to support it. 

2. Assess Your Current Culture 

Once we have a thorough understanding of you and your organization, our next step is to get a handle on the state of your culture currently. This could include the entire organization or only the part that is significant to your role. 

We have a deep toolbox for assessing cultures. It includes our own proprietary Sustainable Culture and Leadership Assessment (SCALA) instrument, among others. SCALA helps us choose precisely the right tools for your company. 

3. Develop a Vision of Your Future Culture

Armed with our knowledge of your company and your current culture, we help you determine the kind of culture you need going forward to support your company’s ongoing success.  

4. Design the Plan 

Next, we assist you in developing a step-by-step strategy for how you are going to get from where you are today to where you want to go.

In developing this plan, we listen to what your employees have to say.  After all, your employees are powerful stakeholders in making the culture better. You can’t do it without them.  

5. Support Implementation 

Armed with a plan, you are ready to start the process of building or strengthening your culture to become vibrant, engaging and winning.  We can assist you as you need us with any or all of the following: 

• Develop and deliver communications
• Assist with project planning 
• Conduct pulse checks to measure progress  
• Troubleshoot 
• Coach leaders 

Creating a Vibrant Culture: Real-World Examples

We have many examples of change services that we have provided to clients.

Example: Rapid Growth Presented Cultural Challenges

When a company is experiencing rapid growth, leaders are often consumed with challenges such as meeting customers’ needs, hiring employees, and launching new products and programs.  They can easily lose focus on the essential cultural components that must be put in place to handle the growth.

Recently we worked with a client experiencing just this dilemma. We helped them:

• Identify the sources of stress
• De-escalate conflict
• Clarify their shared purpose as an organization 
• Identify their common values 
• Establish norms for how they would communicate with each other
• Develop people processes and systems 

The Result

At the end of this process, people reported feeling better prepared to handle the ongoing growth. They said that they were able to be more productive and to quit worrying about whether they were all headed in the same direction. 

Example: Purpose as Part of an Authentic Organization

This relatively young and very successful B Corporation (Benefits Corporation – a company with a social mission integrated into their business model) was concerned about maintaining the culture that had made them so successful to date. They asked us to take the pulse.   We helped them:

• Assess organizational health 
• Evaluate whether their culture was positioning them to achieve social impact 
• Identify strengths to build on 
• Find weak spots to shore up   

The Result

The assessment pinpointed areas of the company that were in good shape and some that needed attention.  As a result, they implemented a strategy to address the weaknesses by leveraging the strengths.

The soul of a company comes alive in a strong, healthy culture. 

For a quick read on your culture, ask yourself what is rewarded and what is punished in your organization – either formally or informally. If you don’t like the answer – or are unsure – contact us, we can help.