Organisations rarely allow their business performance to go unexamined. Revenue, costs, growth targets and operational efficiency are reviewed at regular intervals. Yet one factor that can determine whether those ambitions are realised often receives far less systematic attention: organisational culture.
For Sushil Baveja, CHRO, Jindal Stainless, that imbalance needs correcting.
Speaking at the HRKatha Inner Circle, held in partnership with Culturelytics, Baveja argued that culture should become an integral part of the regular business agenda rather than remain a separate HR initiative.
“Culture in today’s context, I think, is a theme which needs a regular review, stocktaking,” he observed.
His argument was grounded in his own organisation’s experience. Jindal Stainless has ambitious growth plans, and Baveja acknowledged that the company’s efforts to examine its culture should have begun earlier.
“The kind of stocktaking that we are doing today, we should have done it much earlier,” he said.
That admission raises an interesting question. Organisations routinely examine whether they have the financial resources, technology, talent and operational capacity to support their expansion. But do they examine whether their existing culture is equally capable of supporting the business they are trying to become?
A culture that served an organisation well at one stage of its development may not automatically remain suitable as its scale, complexity and ambitions change. Behaviours that worked in a smaller business may become constraints in a larger one. Ways of collaborating, making decisions and exercising authority may need to evolve alongside the organisation.
Baveja suggested that this requires a deliberate exercise in reflection rather than waiting for problems to become visible.
Leaders need to step back periodically, assess how the organisation is progressing and identify the cultural dimensions that require attention.
For Jindal Stainless, that examination has become increasingly important because culture is now recognised as a pillar supporting the organisation’s ambitions.
The larger implication extends beyond one company. If culture influences how effectively a business executes its strategy, reviewing it cannot be treated as an occasional exercise or something reserved for periods of organisational difficulty.
It needs to become part of how leadership assesses business readiness.
At the HRKatha Inner Circle on the Culture–Performance Equation, Baveja’s observation brought the discussion to a practical conclusion: culture cannot remain separate from business strategy when the success of that strategy depends on how people work together.
Watch Sushil Baveja explain why organisations need to examine their culture before their ambitions begin to outgrow it.
