As governments and business leaders come to terms with the effects of the COVID-19 crisis, what is becoming increasingly clear, is that the virus has triggered off a sudden new world order.

The adaptation of remote working technical tools and media such as Google Docs, Hangouts, Zoom, Jira and Skype for communication by businesses during the COVID-19, has, for instance, reached unprecedented levels. We are in a continuous learning loop.

The irony though is that having the tools in place without the right culture and emotional preparedness of your staff, the tools will be a waste of resources. The behaviours and the mindset of your people – call it your corporate culture, is what will drive business success in the unprecedented new order.

In times of uncertainty, knowing who we are culturally, therefore, becomes imperative. Culture is the primary vehicle for the C-Suit leader to establish a preferred legacy in an organization and to recalibrate your peak performance and growth strategies in these unprecedented times of uncertainties.

Indeed, according to Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, “Culture is the leader and the company’s number one asset.”  Equally important, Professor John Kotter and James Heskett in their book, Corporate Culture and Performance [Free Press, 1992] have concluded that there is a consistent correlation between robust, engaged cultures and high-performance business results.

To help both C-Suit leaders and middle-level managers navigate the current situation and prepare for what lies ahead in the new normal, we at Human Capital International (HCI), in this article, explore the implications of the Coronavirus pandemic on leadership and Corporate culture alignment towards company strategic purpose, and growth. We intend to share our insights with you on how to flatten the disease’s growth curve in your organization and address its negative impact.

But before we get into the detailed action steps to be taken, a brief recap of what culture is will suffice. Generally speaking, culture is the self-sustaining pattern of behaviours that determines how things are done. Often, an organization’s culture is implied, not explicitly defined, and develops progressively over time, from the collective cumulative traits of the people within the company. A company’s culture is its basic personality, the crux of how its employees and other stakeholders interact and work. However, culture is an imperceptibly complex entity that thrives and evolves through steady changes in leadership approaches, strategy, and other contextual circumstances.

Here are five actions that, as a leader, you can take to change, improve or realign your corporate culture and influence behaviours in your organization to withstand what’s ahead.

Read this article: Post COVID-19: Rethinking the Opportunities in The Next Normal

1. Affirm the importance of company culture and reinforce it personally.

There is no doubt that as a C-Suit leader or manager, you are the embodiment of the company’s culture. As a result, your direct or indirect actions impact enormously the behaviours, actions and overall output of your followers. There is no doubt that most C-Suit leaders see delegation as a way of empowering the next generation of leaders in the organization. However, research has shown that in crises, companies face a choice of either to stick to the company’s core values and use it as a compass to navigate the challenge or conveniently abandon it and opt for a new set of values. This sort of choice is a tough judgment call only you as the C-Suit leader can and must make. There can be no better time to showcase authenticity and trust, as a leader, among your team, customers and other stakeholders, than during uncertain times. Just as Seth Besmertnik, the CEO of Conductor, a New York-based search engine optimization technology company, has remarked, “Your company’s culture is revealed in a crisis,”.   In his book also, titled, Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul (Rodale Books, 2012): Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks corporation, describes the role of the CEO as “Like crafting the perfect cup of coffee, creating an engaging, respectful, trusting workplace culture is not the result of any one thing. It’s a combination of intent, process, and heart, a trio that must constantly be fine-tuned.” And as CEO or a C- Suit leader, it should be your priority to ensure consistent behavioural prompts about the core intrinsic values, aspirations, and mindsets that underlie your company’s culture and reinforce its strategic purpose.  Your role is to champion the direction and collective performance of the organization.

What are the cultural change priorities that your company must execute to allow for clear prioritization, which in turn, will define the capacity and capabilities required to address the demands of the new normal? Your key role as a leader is to create a constructive environment that can bring out the most innovative and creative thinking from your team. This is what is referred to as the CEO’s cultural impact.

C-Suit leaders take ownership of the big and challenging cultural decisions. You should, therefore, be personally involved in selecting the new critical culturally influencing behaviours needed by the company to reflect the company’s strategic and operating priorities, in a way that others throughout the company can comfortably align with.

2. Digitalize the corporate culture

In these times when governments and businesses around the world are taking special measures to combat the effects of the COVID-19 global health crisis, corporate environments are experiencing a lot of changes resulting in most corporate cultures undergoing tremendous transformation. Today, individuals and teams have resorted to working from home, thereby physically separated. As mentioned earlier, we are in a continuous learning loop as many organizations are adopting the use of remote working technical tools leading to a completely new set of corporate cultures for the new normal.

The critical impact of all these on the core responsibility of leadership and middle-level managers cannot be ignored. While the leader’s initial focus will be on ensuring that businesses can successfully navigate the massive challenges of this new normal, it’s also critically important to consider the impact on your employees and your corporate culture. What leaders need is courage, including taking steps to prioritize and innovate a digital culture to maintain the social cohesion and corporate identity of the organisation as a way of way mitigating the impacts caused by the pandemic.

There is ample evidence to confirm just how important personal relationships are in a work environment as well as how digital culture can help keep employees and other stakeholders close to each other and be more engaged. Digitalizing the corporate culture must thus, be a top priority for all C-suit leaders in the current and coming new normal if productivity and growth are to be achieved. In our previous very well researched article [COVID-19: five ways to stay productive at home], we highlighted how technology is enabling many businesses to continue to function from home and stay close to one another. Tools such as have been mentioned above including emailing and video calls, and Instagram can prove to be very important tools to innovate and maintain a digitalized culture and generate a similar positive impact when used effectively and preserve a positive team togetherness while still working remotely.

This article will interest you: Four tips on leading and managing your teams during quarantine

3. Culture change is not solely led from the top

A lot of times people mistaken leadership to mean those entrusted with positional authority and power under their titles, appointment or election.  But it is important to note that there are many people in organizations, who may not hold any title and perhaps in lower ranks, but inspire and exert more influence than those with titles.

Such individuals are referred to as informal leaders. As a C-Suit leader, and in your effort to digitalize your organizational culture and make it your new self-sustaining pattern of behaviour, it becomes imperative to identify such informal leaders and make them your transformational allies. Such individuals possess natural talents and capacity to promote the internalization of critical behaviours through their ability to connect with their colleagues, encourage collaboration and a sense of excellence among others. In fact, in your effort, identify such informal leaders who are authentic and work with them as your change agents. Today, it is a known fact that information can go viral in no time through blogs, Facebook or LinkedIn posts, and tweets. In such scenarios, authentic informal leaders become unapparelled assets for spreading the critical few behaviuors, habits and values required to deepen the digitalized culture across the organization instead of depending on senior management.

4. Review your strategic objectives to be in sync with the culture.

To say that be quick to align corporate culture to new strategic objectives may seem obvious, but not easy in the face of the challenges confronting C-Suit leaders following the coronavirus pandemic. A clear understanding of your overall operations and supply chain will help to expose any potential vulnerabilities for the adoption of new strategic objectives without causing any further losses. A few weeks ago, for example, a Kitui County Textile Centre, in Kitui, Kenya was making gardening clothes. But when COVID-19 hit Kenya and the rest of Africa and the continent could not get masks, the company adopted a new strategic objective and turned into a fully-fledged factory churning out surgical masks. This is one of the many companies that have changed from making their primary products to something new in response to COVID-19 pandemic across the world. The critical question that you as a leader should be asking about your corporate culture now is whether your company culture allows flexibility and quick innovations to respond to emerging and other critical consumer needs. The world will never be the same and you need to answer if your culture and digital abilities support the new normal.

5. Make your culture a people-centered culture

Business literature is replete with research outcomes that support the benefits of a well-defined culture. These benefits range from motivated employees and greater productivity to improvements in recruitment and retention. Jim Perry, a senior strategist at Market Insights, says “the true power of your brand strategy, isn’t about marketing messages or the look and feel; it’s how it affects your service experience — the things employees do and say which is your culture”. Your corporate culture should be the internal manifestation of your brand promise at an individual level because your culture is about creating an environment that guides and empowers staff in all departments to ‘walk your talk’.

Companies that will withstand the digital storm and COVID-19 pandemic, are those whose staff fully embrace and exemplify the implied collective cumulative traits of the people within the company and can think on their feet. This will require that such companies are always training and retraining their staff to acquire the necessary modern skills to solve modern problems to enhance the customer experience journey. Equally, a culture that emphasizes team building other than individualism, will propel the company to greater heights. Does your company culture care more about the professional and welfare needs of your staff over short-term profits? This will be a determinant on which company will survive and meet consumer expectations.

There is no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has brought about massive disruptions, however as a C-Suit leader, you must keep your eyes on the bigger picture, develop courage and make big decisions and trust that like many other pandemics before, COVID -19 will also come to an end sooner than we thought. And when it finally does, your company should come out stronger than before.