In business, as in life, too often what is urgent is prioritised over what is important. Culture falls victim to this more than any other area. Organisational culture is vastly complex, which can make addressing its shortcomings a daunting task. The inaction this causes can lead to a long term cultural deficit that severely impedes the growth and, ultimately, the success of the business. Bringing in external assistance makes the task of improving culture far easier to approach, more efficient to execute, and significantly more likely to have a positive impact on both the organisation and its employees.

No two companies are the same, which makes your culture - and your cultural needs - completely unique, and constantly evolving. This is not a one-size-fits all solution, nor is it a straight-out-of-the-box piece of tech. Cognis Consulting’s model starts with a 360° granular analysis of your organisation, which provides the necessary data to formulate a targeted and effective solution that enables you to build a culture that really works.

To have a truly low-stress, high-performance culture, there must be joint cultural ownership between the organisation and the individuals within it. Get it wrong, and you see low motivation, absenteeism, high employee attrition, and a general organisational malaise that gradually grinds progress to a halt. Get it right and you facilitate sustained buy-in, motivation and growth at the individual level, which then delivers organisation-wide improvements in performance.

The Cognis model (illustrated below) has been developed over the past few years during work with a number of firms across the financial services sector. Combining that experience with insights from individual work with senior figures in finance, insurance, technology, and the law, it provides a dual top-down/bottom-up model based on the symbiotic nature of company culture. The Cognis model addresses culture through not only a neuroscientific and psychological lens, but also by applying principles of sociology, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology.

Essentially, to address corporate culture - and therefore performance - two things are necessary:

1) Accountability from the organisation: it starts with a decision to build a culture where its employees can grow and perform at their best, and an acknowledgement of both weaknesses and blind spots. This may include redesigning cultural policies, reshaping corporate behaviour, working to improve various environmental factors, engaging with employee relations using a different model, adopting new internal communication structures, and rolling out improved management training.

The aim: A cultural atmosphere where individuals can thrive, not just survive. Happier, healthier employees, lower attrition rates, and higher performance across the board.

2) Personal development for the organisation’s individual employees: give your assets the tools to help themselves thrive. This may include stress management training, improving working practices and habits, and personalised assistance in working on any issues they may wish to address, both professionally and on a personal basis.

The aim: Employees with greater self-understanding, better individual accountability for wellbeing and performance, a more proactive mindset, higher levels of agency and motivation, and a greater buy-in (and therefore loyalty) to the goals and path of the organisation.

Aside from the full-service consultancy model, there is also a suite of services to target more specific areas of concern. These range from top-down consultancy work, to company-wide culture surveys and analyses, to in-house seminars and one-on-one work with individual employees.

Whatever your area of cultural concern is, Cognis can help.