High Performance Organizations and Creating a Culture Renovation w/ Kevin Oakes

In HRchat 325, we consider ways leaders and HR can turn a company's culture into one based on agility, resilience, and innovation.

Bill's guest is Kevin Oakes, CEO and co-founder of the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), the leading authority on next practices in human capital. He is also the author of Culture Renovation™, the #1 new release in a dozen Amazon book categories.  Drawing on data from one of the largest studies ever conducted on corporate culture, Culture Renovation™ details how high-performance organizations such as Microsoft, T-Mobile, 3M, AbbVie, Mastercard and many more have successfully changed organizational culture.

Questions include:

• What are some of the signs that an organization is in need of a culture renovation? Has the pandemic exacerbated any of these problems?
• You write that too often an organization’s leaders assume they know what their culture represents but too often, they are, in fact, wrong. Why are they so often wrong, and how do they get it right?
• During a culture renovation, you stress the importance of identifying the influencers, energizers, and blockers. Can you briefly describe these types of people and why it’s important to identify them?
• A common culture problem you mention in the book is collaboration overload. Further, you say Covid-19 demonstrated just how large the problem has become. What is collaboration overload and how can business leaders and employees alike overcome this issue?
• You’ve been in the human capital field for more than 25 years, and you mention that increasingly, you’ve seen high-performance organizations showcase their CEO-CHRO relationship – something that was rarely done in the past. What makes this a critical partnership and how, if at all, has it changed during the pandemic?
• To recap, what advice do you have for business leaders when it comes to communicating change with employees?

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