Healthy Culture Delivers Better Business Performance

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Business performance and culture have always been linked, although its tended to be anecdotal evidence rather than hard statistics. I myself as part of our High Growth Programme spend some time on the importance of understanding your culture and analysing if it is suitable and desirable for your business going forward. I wrote about these issues on using culture as a support to high growth and culture as a weapon for competitive advantage. Whilst there is little doubt the having the right culture is an important factor in improving your business performance it remains an area that most smaller business owners tend to avoid. It is fair to say that much of this is because business advice and support tends to look at the process driven solutions for business rather than addressing the more difficult area of people, their values and motivations. 


It has always been my contention that getting your organisational culture right will improve your competitive performance and support a company's high growth aspirations because they empower people to be courageous and offer sultions and challenge norms without fear of reprisals or blame. 

Up until now there has not been any hard numbers to support this view. However last June an article was published in McKinseys Quarterly which had actually put numbers to the importance of culture in business performance. As can be seen in the diagram above business performance addressing change plus a healthy culture outperformed poor cultures by as much as 2.2x. This is I expect the first of many such studies as the recognition thart culture plays an important part in supporting a companys success becomes a topic at the centre of a CEO's radar.

Exigent Consulting provides specialist services for High Growth Business , Business Turnaround, and Mentoring to the Small and Medium Business. We help business owners improve the profit performance of their business. 

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Culture - Finding Out What You have

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Recently I wrote about the importance of culture in supporting high growth persistent businesses. I've had a couple of requests from business owners if there was somewhere they could get a sample list of questions which they could use as a starting point for a survey on culture. Not having found anything immediately available I put together a list of 20 sample questions that I thought might be useful.

The question on culture are as follows, fell free to use them as you wish. The most important factor to consider is that answers should be anonymous otherwise your employees will be too busy trying to second guess what they think the answer should be rather than what is the truth.


1. Is the pressure to perform unreasonable?

2. Are targets set by managers unreasonable?

3. Would you prefer to work for a fast moving innovative company or a slow moving cautious company?

4. Is it sometimes difficult to ask questions or raise concerns?

5. Are we a  quality company?

6. Is bad conduct rewarded, tolerated or punished?

7. Is there a close tie between performance and rewards?

8. Do employees consider that the company understands and sufficiently care about the needs of its customers?

9. Is the quality of products and/or services a high priority?

10. Are employees proud of our products and/or services?

11. Do we sell our products based on price or quality?

12. Would you get more criticism for violating an ethical principle than not meeting a deadline or target?

13. It is safe to voice your opinion…true or false?

14. The company turns a blind eye to unethical behaviour if it means getting a sale...true or false?

15. There is one code of ethics for everyone....true or false?

16. We are encouraged to admit mistakes and learn from them...true or false?

17. Are you asked to perform tasks that your mangers would not be prepared to do?

18. Do you ever feel let down by your colleagues?

19. Are your mangers supportive?

20. Which words do you think best describes the company culture as Open, Oppressive, a Meritocracy, Political, Supportive or other?... please specify.

Once you have this information you can follow the steps from my article Culture - getting the one you want on how you can implement changes.

Exigent Consulting provides specialist services for High Growth Business , Business Turnaround, and Mentoring to the Small and Medium Business. We help business owners improve the profit performance of their business. 

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