Last week we faced the difficult truth that most organizational stated cultures are aspirational at best and often do not reflect the true performance environment that each of us walks into each day. So, it was time to “get real” and identify whether our performance environment actually reflects our stated culture. Trust me, if there is a disconnect then it will be very difficult to enhance and sustain organization-wide employee engagement. This week we are highlighting for you one of our client’s path to enhanced engagement and their efforts to align their culture and their performance environment.

Destination Success – For this organization it was time to CARE!

They are a successful oil and gas organization located in Houston, TX that has been in existence for over 130 years, but like most companies in this industry, it is having to reimagine itself to effectively compete for the future. As part of building a new foundation of success they brought in a new CFO with a new vision for the Finance and Accounting (F&A) function.

The F&A organizations' previous year employee engagement scores lagged behind the rest of the organization and where the signs around the building said "We Are Bold" and “One Team,” this CFO saw an organization resigned to the status quo and would over hear statements like “We have always done it that way.”  Instead of “One Team,” he experienced functional silos within the group and rather than strategically partnering with the executive and operations teams they were relegated to a back-office support, executing daily tasks and delivering those walls of numbers!  Sound familiar?  We find pockets of this in just about every organization!

This CFO reached out and asked us what options were available to change a 130-year-old performance environment. Our answer: You and the organization need to CARE more. You need to provide greater Clarity and Alignment to your F&A vision and the aspirational culture the organization is promoting, then we can focus on the necessary Resources to assist in the evolution, and finally determine what it will take to Enable and sustain this performance environment transformation leading to that ever illusive, greater employee engagement.

We teamed up with the CFO and his leadership team on this CARE journey, currently conducting interactive, functional team workshops designed to define what “Bold” is and is not, as well as what “One Team” means and what it will take to enable that. These sessions layout specific action plans including the formation of employee engagement teams that, from the front-line employee level, own the go forward F&A vision and which partner with leadership to redefine the performance environment. We are creating and communicating with greater Clarity and actively gaining organizational Alignment in a number of ways including the workshops and creating a next generation performance environment where every F&A employee is actively leading where they are.

Next week we will highlight the R (Resources) and E (Enable) in the CARE model and how this organization is redefining the work they do, how they do it, and most importantly, the “why” they do it, tied to a meaningful purpose, not just a task to be completed!

For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!

Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.