Wellbeing eats culture for breakfast

Peter Drucker famously said ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. Dis-engaged, stressed and confused employees will not deliver your strategy to its full potential. The success of your plan is inextricably linked to how people deliver it. If people are dis-engaged, stressed and confused about their role it doesn’t matter how good your strategy is, it won’t get delivered to its full potential.

Our wellbeing determines our culture

But what influences culture, or to put it another way, how we do things round here? I’d argue that the biggest influence is wellbeing. Of course this will largely depend on how you define wellbeing but I’m using the following broader definition for reasons clearly explained in this article.

The quality of our lives in balance with other people, species and the planet

Our culture will depend on our personal and collective mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, social, cultural, environmental and economic wellbeing (the eight domains of wellbeing). If we focus on improving these elements and being at our best personally and collectively then our culture will thrive.

In order to engage employees organisations should focus on creating an employee experience that seeks to enhance and promote all of these elements of wellbeing. If you treat employees well then it follows that they will be more open to change and will deliver a better brand experience to customers.

Personal and workplace wellbeing needs to be approached in a balanced way.

Of course this needs to be done in a balanced and integrated way. To provide a few examples, performance will be diminished over the longer term if:

• We’re physically fit but mentally drained or overly stressed.
• Financially we have a bulging bank balance but we’re constantly asking ‘what’s the purpose to all this?’
• If our personal or collective success leaves a bad taste in the mouths of others. We win, they lose.
• We are using resources in an unsustainable manner.

At Improveon we have developed the CANBE model of wellbeing which is an acronym for Creating meaning, Achieving potential, Nurturing relationships, Building resilience and Enriching lives. The model takes a balanced approach to developing wellbeing for individuals, teams and organisations and focuses on the eight domains of wellbeing outlined above.