企業文化是企業的根本,一種內部由上而下的集體共識。若企業發展出良好的可持續發展文化,團隊便會自發作出有利於企業的決策,超越個人利益的得失。不過培養可持續發展文化並非易事,需要透過第三方中立角色協調想法及凝聚共識。
Culture4Good Consulting Limited創辦人John是經驗豐富的文化建築師,他概括這份職責:「我們立場中立,沒有既得利益,單純想讓大家透過文化轉型之旅(Culture Transformation Journey)尋找到屬於公司的語言和文化,為企業建立持續對話及勇於嘗試的可持續發展文化。從一系列工作坊中,團隊找到共通語言去排解疑難。大家並肩作出各種嘗試,發掘團隊及個人的潛能,尋找公司能夠發展的空間,從而開拓一些新的可能性,一同尋找解決方案。」
企業營運問題天天都多,John強調管理層未必有所有答案,亦並非是解決問題的唯一渠道,要做的反而是在一對一或團隊層面上令同事受到啟發,自發找到下一步要做的事。「管理層需要學習特定技巧及思維方式去設計完善的討論流程,才能凝聚團隊共識,使大家能夠互相在對方身上找到啟發,有技巧地想到大家背後的出發點,從而找到共贏方案,可以向前去嘗試。」
王牌服務:簡單高效的「文化轉型之旅」
Culture4Good創辦人John在諮詢行業擁有超過17年經驗,尤其專注於企業文化轉型和客戶體驗管理。他在過往工作中遇到不少高管和董事會成員,均希望在新冠疫情期間改變企業文化,以應對動盪不安的商業環境。可惜的是,高管日程十分忙碌,需要專注在業務營運等工作上,較難有閒暇進行變革。
John察覺到高管的難處,決心在這方面耕耘。他辭任舊公司諮詢顧問一職,重新思考更簡單、高效的文化轉型之旅,以激勵高管及各部門管理團隊合力解決迫切的業務或團隊問題,進而改進公司的管治方式。
「解決眼前難題是最基本的第一步,最終目標是種下成長的種子,將企業文化轉變為可持續發展的環境、社會和管治(ESG)文化。」John續說:「懷著這個理想,歷經數個月蘊釀後,我成立了文化轉型諮詢公司Culture4Good,構思出標誌性的『文化轉型之旅(Culture Transformation Journey)』,同時亦提供策略規劃(Strategic Planning)、高管培訓(Executive Coaching)、管理診室(Management Clinic)等諮詢服務。」


從團隊內部出發 共同反思解決方案
企業文化的概念看似抽象,簡單概括便是在同一屋簷下的員工如何作出決策。同事能否在公司角度思考問題,以換位思維找出公司背後的出發點?會否思考自己能做些甚麼來幫助公司?當員工有意識地從公司利益出發,做出有利公司的個人和團隊決策時,企業文化便會朝著可持續發展的方向前進,讓公司有機會成長、壯大,一代接一代地延續下去。
或許有人會以為文化轉型即是引入外來概念,淡化公司現有文化,甚至兩者之間有衝突。不過在Culture4Good看來,大多數高管純粹是忽略了一些他們早已知道的事情、未有完全發掘同事的潛能和優點。因此Culture4Good的文化轉型旅程從團隊內部出發,針對團隊現有問題,共同反思解決方案,思考有哪些事情是自內部可以改善的,而非強逼同事接受一套嶄新概念。同事調整心態,從舒適圈(Comfort Zone)延伸至學習區(Stretch Zone),踏出改變的第一步。整個團隊持續反思,培養出有利於公司發展的個人及團隊行為,高管便可以自內部創造快樂、共同成長的持續發展企業文化。


以開放思維接受文化轉型的新挑戰
談到印象深刻的個案,John以一家專門做紅酒銷售的上市公司客戶為例。客戶的跨部門高管團隊比較封閉,只關心各自的部門而不了解大局。有見銷售額因新冠疫情而遭受打擊,執行董事深信唯有通過Culture4Good去培養高管團隊文化,才能為零售寒冬後的業務反彈做好準備。
經過4個月的文化轉型之旅,高管團隊受到啟發,成為心態開明、能力多元的領導者。他們能夠以各種行為、理論為工具,為團隊設計結構化的討論框架,協助下屬找出下一步行動,更有效地推動團隊決策,共同向目標邁進。
「當整個市場正不停轉變,而公司卻處於舒適圈內,太滿足於現狀時,便有不進則退的情況。我們的客戶普遍在營運或管理上遇到挑戰,不能繼續沿用現有方法,需要我們這種第三方顧問去進行企業文化轉型。」John勉勵大家:「若轉型時抱持樂在其中的樂觀心態,以開放思維接受新事物,就不會感到受壓及痛苦;反而這是一個很好的機會,讓大家突破自我,走出舒適圈,成就更好的自己。」
Building a Sustainable Culture: Developing Resonance from Within
John Lee, Founder and Chief Culture Architect of Culture4Good Consulting Limited is a dynamic and results-driven senior industry professional with over 17 years of insightful experience across diverse sectors focusing on culture transformation consulting and customer experience management.
During his past management consulting work in leadership development and corporate sustainability, he came across quite a few executive leaders and board of directors, who were struggling to transform their company culture to cope with the fluctuating and volatile business environment, especially during the global pandemic. Despite the desperate need to change, most of their schedules were flooded by business operations and tight on financial resources.
As John’s desire to help these frustrated business leaders grew over time, he departed from his previous consultancy to rethink a more streamlined reflective journey for inspiring executives and management teams to resolve burning business/team issues together and improve corporate governance; eventually seeding the crucial elements to transform the company culture towards a sustainable environmental, social and governance (ESG) culture.
Soon after months of incubation, his culture transformation consulting social business —Culture4Good, was established alongside with their signature Culture Transformation Journey, and a wide range of other consulting services including strategic planning, executive coaching, management clinic, etc.
Concept of cultural transformation: continual process of nurturing new individual and team behaviors that sustains the business
Company culture can be regarded as how decisions are being made by people who work under the same umbrella and every department/team has their own unique culture when comprising of different group dynamics. As staff learn to consciously make individual and team decisions differently for the company’s greater good, corporate culture thus gradually transforms towards a sustainable future and have the potential to grow beyond generations.
Like driving other people and culture change in management for corporate sustainability, one of the most common challenges is being easily mis-interpreted as introducing foreign concepts to dilute or even clash with the company’s existing culture. This may be true to a certain extent for other external consulting work, but at Culture4Good, they believe most executives purely “don’t know what they already know”. Therefore, Culture Transformation Journey is positioned as a co-reflective journey of identifying what works for the company from within. Through this continual process of nurturing new individual and team behaviors that sustains the business, a fast-growth and happy workplace culture can be uniquely crafted internally by its own management team.
Inspire executives embarking on insightful reflective journey together
A client worth highlighting was a board of directors from a church & community centre operating charity organization. Last year’s shocking child abuse scandal of Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children (HKSPC) was certainly a “wake-up call” for many NGOs to reinforce their board’s corporate governance. This client was no different and approached Culture4Good to re-strategize their internal organizational structure for greater transparency and uphold the high public expectations, especially in terms of serving the underprivileged community.
Despite the strategic planning workshop was disrupted by 5th wave of pandemic and last-minute migrated the entire delivery to online, discussions remained deep and constructive with not much compromise in the overall experience. In fact, the board of directors were quite surprised with the amount of quality output and concrete quick wins through the gap analysis. In addition, sub-teams were still able to revisit the co-created output through our confidential online platform anytime, for internal follow-up as part of the governance structure review exercise.
Dedicated effort channeled by word-of-mouth
Looking back into Culture4Good’s founding year, they believe brand advocacy may be one of their current top-of-mind challenges. Given the non-disclosure nature in their B2B consulting work with most of their clients, months of their dedicated effort are usually passively channeled by word-of-mouth and post-service reviews across their social media channels at the moment.
Moreover, since most of their uniquely crafted culture transformation experiences may only be relevant and beneficial to each of their client’s own corporate sustainability, other executive leaders may sometimes find it rather difficult to match Culture4Good’s value proposition with their business needs for management consulting.
Graduating towards Year 2, Culture4Good believe ensuring quality output of their tailored consulting experience and being attentive to each of their valuable customer’s needs in tackling their unique set of business/team challenges shall remain as their top priority.
In fact, after being incentivized by the global pandemic to evolve their service delivery for remote teams, Culture4Good are also aiming to extend our culture transformation consulting services to assist overseas executives, who are in desperate need to identify possible next steps in resolving burning business/team issues for good and are open to online delivery as a viable option.