Business consultants play a pivotal role in shaping an organization’s culture, steering companies towards practices that recognize and elevate the human aspect of business.
The aim is to instill an intentional culture that aligns business strategies with cultural goals and enhances employee satisfaction. By applying these principles, consultants can help organizations achieve a harmonious balance between productivity and personal development.
On a recent episode of Powered by Instinct, we talked with EOS Worldwide President and Integrator Kelly Knight to dive into the strategies and tools to build intentional, people-first cultures. Here’s what you should know to make it happen.
An intentional culture within an organization is a deliberately cultivated environment that aligns the company’s core values and business strategies with the behaviors and attitudes of its team members.
Building an intentional culture requires focused effort and strategic planning to design a workplace where every process, interaction, and decision supports the organization’s overarching goals while creating a cohesive and motivated workforce.
When team members feel aligned with the company’s values and objectives, they are more likely to be engaged and invested in their roles. This alignment enhances collaboration, drives innovation, and increases retention, reducing the costs associated with turnover and lost productivity.
Kelly shares how she uses Kolbe during the hiring process to ensure that they hire the right person from the get-go. She says, “And we really desire greatly to make sure that we’re getting the right match from the very beginning, because we realize that if we’re not the right fit for somebody, we want to know as soon as possible for their benefit, just as much as ours. So Kolbe has been absolutely instrumental in every single hire.”
Moreover, when a culture is intentionally shaped around the strengths and needs of its people, it leverages their natural abilities, leading to greater efficiency and effectiveness in meeting business challenges.
By cultivating an intentional culture, consultants help organizations enhance their operational performance and build a sustainable competitive advantage in their market.
An intentional culture involves certain foundational elements that create a robust framework for organizational success. As consultants, here are the six key components you should help your clients define to build an intentional culture.
An intentional culture is built on a foundation of clearly defined core values. They serve as a compass for behavior and help align the employees’ values with those of the organization, which ensures consistency in how the organization presents itself internally and externally. Help your client define values that resonate deeply with every member of the organization and guide their daily actions and decisions.
Kelly shares how much she relies on Kolbe to check for value alignment when hiring. She says, “And so part of this is being reliant upon tools that are so good and so selective at helping us really get it right and not discounting them. And Kolbe is one of them where it is tried and true. And if it is not a fit, we just won’t do it. And we have saved ourselves so much pain and agony of having to reset and do another search again by just relying on tried and true methods, which we consider Kolbe to be.”
Ensure that every aspect of your client’s strategy, from the highest-level objectives to the most minute operational details, supports and enhances the cultural goals. This alignment involves integrating the culture into performance metrics, rewards systems, and the criteria for leadership and staff evaluations.
Work with clients to foster an inclusive, empathetic, and supportive leadership style that
prioritizes their teams’ growth and well-being. This approach involves transparent communication, consistent support for professional development, and recognition of achievements.
Open, honest, and consistent communication that makes employees feel heard and valued is vital to maintaining and nurturing an intentional culture. Work with clients to ensure that communication at all levels — downward communication from management to staff, upward, and across peer levels — is effective and transparent.
An intentional culture values continuous improvement and learning. It encourages feedback at all levels and sees mistakes as learning opportunities. Help your clients understand what their employees need to better themselves personally and professionally.
Organizations can enhance engagement and accountability by empowering employees to make decisions that align with the core values and strategic objectives. You can help your clients develop best practices to foster an environment where new ideas are welcomed and encouraged and teams are provided with the resources needed for decision-making.
By focusing on these six components, you can help your clients create a dynamic and responsive culture that not only supports the organizational objectives but also positions them to meet future challenges effectively.
The first step to building an intentional culture is recognizing the need for cultural transformation within an organization.
Several signs can indicate that an organization’s culture may be hindering its potential:
Kelly talks about how she uses Kolbe to identify communication challenges. She says, “I think, as managers and leaders, we need to create that really open, vulnerable, able to be completely open and honest environment for that. And you know, when you think about Kolbe, I will often look at teams and we can run the matrix of what the leadership team looks like and where we have too much crossover and not enough. We have holes on teams.”
Your clients may be dealing with just one of these issues or a combination of all of them. But once you’ve identified the problems, you can start having discussions about what it takes to work through them.
As a business consultant, you stand at the forefront of fostering transformative cultural changes within organizations. Your role is crucial in steering your clients towards embracing a people-first approach and truly embedding it into their operational DNA.
Leveraging the synergies between EOS and Kolbe can dramatically enhance your effectiveness as a consultant. EOS provides a structured framework to align team members with the company’s core values and strategic objectives, while Kolbe’s assessments delve into the natural instincts that drive individual and team performance. Together, they create a comprehensive approach that ensures alignment and profound engagement across all levels of the organization.
Learn how to enhance your consulting impact and join a community of forward-thinking professionals with Kolbe Certification™. Together, let’s lead the transformation in organizational cultures.
