CultureIQ brought its strategic expertise to the breakfast table at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s’ 2020 Conference in June. The gathering of more than 2000 leaders, educators and students was SIOP’s 35th annual event, held virtually from June 16-30.
In a “Culture Joins Strategy for Breakfast” panel session, I/O practitioners from 3M, Dow and Universal Parks & Resorts joined organizer Scott Young, CultureIQ’s Managing Director, Culture Solutions, to talk about the challenge of changing an organization’s culture to align it with a new business strategy.
Twofold challenge
The panel talked about the simultaneous challenges in changing organizational culture and the increasing frequency of the need to change it to align to new business strategies. Young and the practitioners discussed these challenges and how they have tackled them in their organizations. Panelists were asked about the aspects of business strategy that led to the need for culture change, methods used to embed the desired culture in their organizations, how their I/O knowledge and experience contributed to the culture change efforts, and the challenges they encountered and the lessons learned.
“I thoroughly enjoyed discussing organizational culture with three insightful I/O psychology practitioners in three great companies,” Young says. “Each of these organizations embarked on significant culture change efforts in response to shifts in their strategic direction, and it was inspiring to hear the great work the panelists have led to help their organizations through these changes.”
M&A Strategy
CultureIQ Head of Solutions Cathy Maraist and Strategists Paul Mastrangelo, Diane Daum and Rob Beres also gave quantitative and qualitative presentations discussing the challenges that mergers & acquisitions pose for employees, organizations, and workgroups tasked with implementing them, and offered suggestions for successfully integrating disparate organizations.
The first presentation discussed the impact of mergers and acquisitions on employee attitudes using survey data collected on working adults in four countries. Subsequent presentations covered how three companies–Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Quaker Houghton, and Dow–addressed the challenges of integrating disparate companies, and offered advice about pitfalls to avoid and lessons learned that can be useful for I/O and HR practitioners.
Congratulations to all of our CultureIQ team members who offered insights at SIOP 2020 – and here’s to a less-distanced gathering in 2021!
