Big idea

The future organization uses culture to drive performance.

Carrots and sticks are ideas from the past. The best workplaces create cultures and values that ensure employees do what’s right as instinct, not as policy.

What we're seeing

Daniel Pink’s seminal book, Drive, examines our collective assumptions around motivation. Incentives and the threat of punishment don’t drive performance, he found, autonomy, mastery, and purpose do.

Why it matters

Instead of thinking of culture as a barrier to change, lean on culture as a lever for change. Bring employees together on a common mission and create a vision people can rally behind.

COMPANY RESULTS WITH HIGH ENGAGEMENT SCORES VS. LOWER ENGAGEMENT SCORES

15%

greater employee productivity
26%

less employee turnover
100%

more unsolicited employment applications

SOURCE: Queen's University Centre for Business Venturing

How does Habanero go about cultural change?
Cultures are first discovered through an empathetic inquiry into the artifacts, values, beliefs, and motivations that exist within the organization. From an appreciative study of 'what is', we then help organizations envision a future of what 'could be' and design the plan and tools to get there.

Using purpose and values to drive performance at Arc’teryx

Visit the Arc’teryx facilities, and you’ll find among the materials and fabrics that adorn their desks, a team of people with an obsessive passion for quality. And borrowing from the extreme sports they support, they also have a drive for constant improvement.

The values and culture team at Arc’teryx saw an opportunity to boost organizational performance by renewing their organization's purpose and values. The knew that if they could improve their employees' relationship to their purpose they would boost autonomy, improve accountability, and fuel growth.

It’s the strongest cultures that will endure this era of change. The ability of people to adapt has always been the most effective lever of change, and that’s obvious now more than ever.
Brian Edwards
Director, Products and Services, Habanero Consulting Inc.

Creating “One Wawanesa”

With a history dating back to 1896, Wawanesa has experienced a lot of reinvention. But how does a 120 year-old company meet its goal of increasing revenue, profit, and number of policyholders amidst an insurance marketplace that is undergoing massive digital disruption?

They align people around the largest change they’ve ever made.

With a workforce that had become increasingly decentralized, Wawanesa sought to create a new “One Wawanesa” culture and a bring a unified focus to the transformation of their most fundamental business processes and the lifeblood of their company: their customer experience.