A Guide To Cultural Consultants: How They Can Help Drive Success

by Jason Richmond, CEO and Chief Culture Officer at Ideal Outcomes, Inc. 

If you’re looking to improve your company culture, hiring a cultural consultant can be a great way to do it. A good consultant can help you assess your current culture, identify areas that need improvement, and create a plan for change.

Below, we’ll explore the role of a cultural consultant in more detail and identify how they can help you foster a healthy company culture.

What Is a Cultural Consultant?

Cultural consultants are experts who help companies build strong cultures. They assess an organization’s current culture and make recommendations for how it can be improved. They also work with leadership to develop strategies for communicating and reinforcing the desired culture.

When you work with a cultural consultant, they can bring an objective, outside perspective that helps you understand your company culture and identify ways to make it more effective.

Why Work with a Cultural Consultant?

There are many reasons why you might consider hiring a cultural consultant. Maybe you’re looking to improve employee engagement or increase retention. Perhaps you want to create a more positive work environment or make your company more attractive to top talent. Or maybe you recognize that your current culture isn’t working and something needs to change.

Other common reasons for working with a cultural consultant include:

Underperformance

Underperforming employees might not be motivated or engaged in their roles. Your workplace may also be experiencing ineffective communication that hinders employees’ ability to thrive.

If you’ve tried to address this issue without success, it might be time to bring in a cultural consultant. A consultant can help you understand the root of the problem and develop a plan to turn things around.

Conflict in the Workplace

If you have employees who have difficulty working well together, it can create a hostile work environment and make it difficult to get things done.

A cultural consultant can help you identify the causes of the conflict and develop strategies to resolve it. Moreover, they can help you develop policies and procedures that help prevent and address future conflict.

Poor Communication

Poor communication can lead to miscommunication, missed deadlines, and frustrated employees. This can increase turnover and cause employees who do stay to feel unmotivated in their roles.

A cultural consultant can help you improve communication in your workplace and implement effective long-term communication strategies.

Ineffective Onboarding

Effective onboarding is important to set new employees up for success, and ineffective onboarding can cause you to lose top candidates. A one-time, brief onboarding session can cause employees to feel disengaged and lack confidence in their roles.

Cultural consultants can help you ensure your company culture is attractive to top talent and that your onboarding process effectively gets new employees up to speed.

Lack of Engagement

A lack of employee engagement can significantly affect many other aspects of your organization. It’s a common problem that can be tough to solve, but a cultural consultant can help.

A consultant will start by assessing your current culture. They’ll look at things like your values, mission, and goals. They’ll also talk to employees to get their perspectives. From there, the consultant can help you identify the root causes of disengagement and create a plan to address them.

How Cultural Consultants Drive Success

As explored above, cultural consultants can help your business in several ways. They do this by:

Learning About Your Goals

This is the first and arguably most important step. A cultural consultant will work with you to understand your ideal culture, including the values and practices that comprise it. Defining your cultural goals can help the consultant better assess your current culture, such as where you are on track and where you can improve.

Assessing Your Current Culture

You can’t improve what you don’t understand. A cultural consultant will assess your company culture by holding interviews with employees, observing workplace interactions, and reviewing company policies and procedures.

The consultant will look for both positive and negative aspects of your culture. They’ll also identify gaps between your stated values and how those values are embodied in day-to-day work life. This process provides invaluable insights for determining next steps.

Identifying Areas for Improvement

Once the consultant has a good understanding of your current culture, they can help you identify areas that need improvement. They will make recommendations for addressing aspects of your culture that aren’t working.

Improvements could involve anything from creating better communication channels to increasing employee involvement in decision-making. Cultural consultants can also work closely with your leadership team to ensure that they’re modeling the desired behavior and setting the tone for the rest of the organization.

Creating a Plan for Change

The final step is to create a plan for change. This will involve setting goals and timelines and developing tools and resources. The consultant will also work with you to implement the plan and track progress over time.

It’s important to note that culture change is a journey, not a destination. There’s no “perfect” culture, and the goal is to continuously strive for improvement. Your company culture will likely need adjusting over the years as your business grows and changes. A cultural consultant can be a valuable partner in this journey, providing insights, guidance, and support along the way.

Make Culture Your Competitive Advantage

If you’re looking to improve your organization’s culture, a cultural consultant can be a valuable partner. They can help you assess your current culture, develop a vision for your desired culture, and create a plan for how to get there.

At Ideal Outcomes, our culture evolution consultants can help you enhance company culture by developing a custom plan to drive business success. Our five-step culture consulting methodology is comprised of:

  1. Defining your desired future state
  2. Diagnosing current shortfalls
  3. Creating a plan to close the gaps
  4. Measuring your progress
  5. Sustaining your change

We can help you drive positive cultural change that engages your employees and gives you a competitive edge. Contact us today to learn more.