Does Culture Add Value?

Does Culture Add Value?

In a report released today VortexDNA has revealed a key finding of its pioneering research into the link between culture and performance in organisations. “Up to a critical point culture plays no role in improving performance,” says Branton Kenton-Dau, CEO VortexDNA. “Most organisations don’t understand this. It’s not linear.”

Through its research into S&P500, NASDAQ, ASX200, NZX50 and FTSE100 companies VortexDNA uncovered the mathematics that describes the relationship between culture and performance. “It’s the math that tells the story,” says Martin Burley, the company’s Head of Research. “There has to be enough alignment around the purpose and values of the company before you start to see the benefits of culture kick in.”

Once this critical threshold, or to use the scientific term, phase transition, is reached, the benefits can be enormous. “By almost any measure – Return on Assets, Profit, Return on Sales, Stakeholder Engagement, Environmental Stewardship – strong culture firms perform better beyond this critical point,” says Kenton-Dau. ‘Indeed we found that having a strong culture can improve a company’s return on assets by up to 72%. A truly outstanding performance improvement.”

But how can an organisation know whether its culture is adding value? VortexDNA has developed a Culture Index that provides senior managers with a monthly measure of the strength of their culture and its contribution to the organisation’s performance based on regular surveys sent to staff. “The threshold you want to cross on the Culture Index is 60%,” says Burley, “that is when you start to see tangible benefits.”

“If you don’t understand the maths,” says Kenton-Dau, “you may not know if your culture is adding value. But once you can accurately measure your culture then you can start to effectively manage this key resource. At that stage building a strong culture can become one of the easiest ways to improve organisational performance.”

About VortexDNA

Over ten years VortexDNA has built a reputation for pioneering, and then applying, intention-based technology across a range of sectors and fields. From discovering the mathematics of intention at work in the performance of organisations, to delivering improvements to Google Search®, VortexDNA technology continues to deliver improved outcomes for dramatic bottom line results.

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