Welcome to the Roadmap, an ASBN-exclusive resource designed to educate entrepreneurs about the value of growing and monetizing their businesses. Host Ted Jenkin, CEO and Co-Founder of oXYGEN Financial is joined by Dr. Donte Vaughn, the CEO of CultureWorx, to discuss his entrepreneurial journey and how to better implement culture within different businesses.
The vast majority of workplace culture evaluation methods are reactive, static, and bottom-up, meaning they only ask employees to rate their level of satisfaction with the executive team or work environment without taking any proactive steps to foster it. In order to assist you in accurately measuring and managing your corporate culture, Dr. Vaughn and his team developed CultureWorx and their Culture Performance Management products.
Dr. Donte Vaughn left his boutique operational management consulting firm on the premise of networking. When constructing his company, there was a significant emphasis on systems and process improvement, especially in the management and consultant industry. By leveraging his networking capabilities, Dr. Vaughn met entrepreneurs with a similar goal- how to understand leadership behavior better.
Pillars
It’s crucial to equip new hires with a roadmap or business fundamentals when hiring. Dr. Vaughn suggests, “If you can help a person understand where they are and where they want to be, and then understand how to navigate their journey, they have a better opportunity to reach their destination. Therefore, Dr. Vaughn also emphasizes that firms need performance pillars. Pillars such as:
- Education
- Understanding
- Coaching
- And the development around what it means to reinforce your leadership performance “Is paramount to driving the overall performance you’re looking for,” notes Dr. Vaughn.
Because it is imperative to understand how business leaders want their staff to engage or interact and make better daily decisions. Dr. Vaughn asserts, “Then you can mobilize around what looks like. Hence we need to get back to the foundation of what is required to drive the performance outcome.” Often, that requires firms to work backward. Dr. Vaughn said, “Yes, you’ve been successful, but what drove your business forward through the lenses of engagement, interaction, and behavior.”
It’s essential to note that companies are marginalizing their culture. But in Dr. Vaughn’s opinion, “We have to get back to treating culture like a strategic pillar in the business and how to navigate it accordingly.” Culture is not about initiatives; it’s about strategically navigating and managing the way people show up and interact.
Ultimately, to counter-argue, another failure pillar is accountability. From the owner all the way down need to hold accountability and ask themselves; Am I perpetuating the behaviors I want to see in my frontline leaders to achieve my desired outcome?
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