Culture is like a stew

The most important assets for every organization are its employees and culture.
Together they create a system where everything is connected to everything.
Together they make for a complex stew with many ingredients.

The stew pot is always cooking, sometimes at a simmer, sometimes boiling over, but always cooking.
The just right balance of ingredients to achieve the just right “taste” differs for every organization.
There is no secret sauce that works just right for everyone.

We can help your organization to achieve the right taste.
We have the social, technical, psychological, and management expertise to do just that.

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About Inspired Business Cultures, Inc.

Dr. Gerald Wagner

The company was founded by Dr. Gerald Wagner in collaboration with a community of accomplished professionals. After several years of work on employee wellbeing, happiness, wellness, and engagement Jerry realized what really matters, i.e., culture. It embodies all of those fashionable words so popular today but most importantly it provides a foundation for every organization to build from.

newstreamtv.com/jerrywagner

We work with organizations to design, articulate and maximize the value of their business culture. The quality of what we deliver allows organizations like yours to achieve a competitive advantage and our solutions are affordable.

As most leaders would say, culture isn't everything–it is the only thing. The benefits of an intentionally designed workplace include:

  • Attracting great talent.
  • Retaining your best employees.
  • Developing employees who deliver service resulting in loyal customers.
  • Nurturing employees who understand and brag about their organization's culture.
  • Innovating beyond what has ever been imagined.
  • Exceeding even aggressive goals.

If business workplace culture and inspired employees are a passion for you, and you want to explore how you can impact your company’s mission and goals by focusing on culture, we would love to get to know you.

Can we talk and get acquainted?
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Getting your attention

There is abundant data supporting the value of improving workplace culture and employee engagement. These are examples:

  • Engaged and happy employees are fifty percent (50%) for more productive.
  • Engaged and happy employees are thirty percent (30%) more innovative.
  • Wellness programs themselves have ROI’s of 3:1 or greater.
  • Sixty percent (60%) of managers think culture is more important than strategy or operating models.
  • Only thirty five percent (35%) of managers think culture is effectively managed.
  • Fifty percent (50%) of managers think a major culture overhaul is needed.
  • Forty two percent (42%) think all employees should be responsible for culture but only fourteen percent (14%) of employees are actually involved in culture change.

If those numbers get your attention and if you suspect that your workplace culture could use some expert attention, we offer a complementary evaluation and test project. After that with your approval, we will prepare a custom proposal for your consideration that is turnkey to achieve the actions, targets, and benefits you desire.

Can we talk about getting started?
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What we do

We start with a workplace culture assessment. Real data is needed to identify strengths and weaknesses, and make plans for improvements. Our thorough assessment employs a proven structure, process, and three powerful software tools. The duration of an entire culture assessment is about 3 months, but your employees will see results from the preliminary assessment within a couple of days

The three software products are each stand alone. However they are intended to be used in the sequence shown below from left to right.

While high impact to your business results, the culture assessment won’t impact daily work schedules.

Following the assessment, our consultants work as executive advisers to assist executives with intelligent and prudent selection and implementation of initiatives.

A breakdown of “What We Do” is explained in these sections:

Project structure
and process.

Workplace culture assessment software.

Executive advising following assessment.

Is what we do clear in this brief introduction? If not, can we talk about it?
Yes!

Workplace Culture Workshop

Our workshops are famous for their fast pace, hands on interaction, liveliness, fun, and content that gets right to the point. These one day intensive and comprehensive workshops are for managers who are or want to become culture leaders.

Kimberly Wiefling

“The Stories We Tell:
Creating and Perpetuating Your Corporate DNA”



Dr. Gerald Wagner

Jerry Wagner

“Visualizing Business Cultures... and Engaging Employees Through Web-based Software Tools”

See aimforbrilliance.org/event-url for more information.

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Partners

IF, you are a management consultant and/or coach and would like to expand your repertoire;

IF, what we do has piqued your interest;

IF your answers to the above are yes, we offer you an opportunity that may seem too good to be true. But it is true.

You can offer our software as a part of your consulting services and pay us nothing for one year while you are getting up to speed. You set your own pricing. After your first year there is a nominal fee.

In a 2-hour GoToMeeting we train you on the software for free. During that time we also discuss marketing and positioning. If you need more time after that, no problem and for free. We will even do a few free demo’s presentations for your prospects if you ask.

It should be clear that we are not doing this for financial benefit to us. We are doing it because of our commitment to improve the happiness and wellbeing of organizational cultures.

Yeah, let’s talk!
Ok!

Viewpoints about Workplace Culture

Viewpoints

VIEWPOINTS, a place where culture matters.

VIEWPOINTS is the place to share and read insightful and edgy stories about inspired business cultures. VIEWPOINTS is not just another blog. We’re not looking for “the same old stuff”. Topics of interest include all the typical ones, such as happiness, engagement, satisfaction, wellbeing, but we don’t want posts that repeat what almost everybody already knows or could find with a simple Google search.

We want fun and engaging pieces that let us peek into what’s on your mind. We want short, scrappy, “bite-size” articles with ideas that will grab our readers and stick in their memories long enough to be put into action in their own workplaces. Our vision is that our posts have an authentic voice – a “personality” that captures the essence of the author, what they are actively engaged in real-time, and what matters to them. We want you to connect with our audience by including something other than a bio head shot if you have some.

Here are some example topic lead ins. Feel free to add your own. You will “get” what we are trying to do here:

  • Right now I’m working on…
  • I just finished…
  • I heard about…
  • I wish…
  • Why not…?
  • I don’t care whether or not…
  • It’s time we…
  • I love this product/services because…
  • I agree with…
  • I doubt…
  • I think we should pay attention to…

We would love to have your posts and comments. Remember to subscribe to get notices of new posts, you will be glad you did. There is no other place like VIEWPOINTS.

Would like to take a look?
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The Institute

We are proud to have an affiliation with the new Institute called The Institute for Inspired Organizational Cultures. If you are an IBC subscriber and/or viewer you will surely want to learn about the Institute and also subscribe there. To see a short invitation to participate in the Institute see inspiredorganizationalcultures.org.

Good Reading

There are large numbers of great articles that are aligned with the flurry of activity around workplace culture and wellbeing, i.e., aligned with what we do. It is a “hot” topic and thus lots of interest.

Below is a sample list of timely articles for starters. They are short, timely and understandable insights for today’s practicing managers. They are not scholarly articles.

Most managers who view this site don’t have time to daily check on what’s new. But it is a part of our job to stay current and we share it with you.

This list is a nice complement to our VIEWPOINTS. If you have subscribe to VIEWPOINTS, you will get a monthly email listing the articles that were added during the previous 30 days. This is something that you and your colleagues really don’t want to pass up.

Subscribe to VIEWPOINTS now!
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Yes, we’d like to get acquainted!

Yes, I would like to discuss possibilities for getting started.

Yes, I would like to talk about what you do.

Yes call me with more detail about this workshop.

Yes call me with more detail about this workshop.

Yes please send me a few brochures. Thanks.

Lets look at IBC-Cultures together.

Lets look at IBC-Engagement together.

Lets look at IBC-Ideas together.

Fill this contact form and we will get in touch with you soon.

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PROJECT STRUCTURE AND PROCESS

When the project begins, an Ambassador Council is formed. This group is made up of about 7 employees that the CEO invites to participate. Each is viewed as having leadership qualities. They have these primary functions.

  • They are goodwill ambassadors to promote employee happiness and wellbeing.
  • They attend a ½ day orientation about all aspects of the project including hands on experience with the software.
  • They mentor other employees in the phases of the project.
  • At the end of each of the three data gathering phases:
    • They analyze employee input data.
    • They prepare recommendations for management’s consideration.
    • They present results and recommendations to management.
    • They coordinate getting management’s feedback and provide that to employees.
  • They are on the alert for projects to improve the workplace culture.
  • They evaluate prospective projects, recruit volunteers to be responsible, and keep management informed of progress.
  • They teach or arrange for short wellbeing classes for employees on topics such as financial planning, volunteering, and nutrition.

One of our senior consultants works closely with the Council as an adviser and coach and attends their presentations to management. When the project is formally completed, Ambassadors will continue to be on-going cultural leaders in their organization.

At the conclusion of a workplace culture assessment, a final report is delivered to management in soft and hard copy form. It is expected that management will provide the soft copy to all employees. The report includes the following sections:

  • History of the project.
  • Presentation of members of the Ambassadors Council with photos and short resumes.
  • Culture Assessment (IBC-Cultures) results including department and company charts; Power Point slides created by the Ambassadors for presenting results to management; and management’s response.
  • Workplace Engagement Assessment (IBC-Engagement) results including department and company charts; Power Point slides created by the Ambassadors for presenting results of the workplace wellbeing phase to management and; managements response.
  • Ideas for Improving Workplace Wellbeing (IBC-Ideas) results including all submitted ideas in rank order of priority; Power Point slides created by the Ambassadors for presenting results of collecting ideas for workplace improvement to management and; management’s response.
  • Employee Evaluation of the project.
  • Ambassador Councils report including a summary of management’s action items and their current status; an evaluation of Councils experiences with the project; “Spin Off” projects and their status; and plans for continuing the Ambassador Council.

We love it when employees say nice things about our process. We have a composite from several clients. Take a look at LINK

Participation of all employees is critical to a successful project. What we do is new to them. We have an attractive hard copy pocket size tutorial that exactly and clearly explains their role.

Would you like some brochures?
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WORKPLACE CULTURE ASSESSMENT SOFTWARE

IBC-CULTURES©

The IBC-Cultures© software is for creating charts that show what employees believe is their current organizational culture and what they wish it would be. This can be done by members of any group(s) such as work groups, departments, product categories, and geographic regions. Every employee sees their results, each group’s results and the organizations results. All is anonymous and not traceable to any individual. Status of the current culture and what is wished for are very clearly presented.

We have taken the world’s most often used methodology for capturing and displaying culture and put it into software that is intuitive and requires no training. Take a test drive at www.ibc-cultures.com/test/.

Can we get online with you and look at the software together? We love doing that.
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IBC-ENGAGEMENT©

The IBC-Engagement© software is an organizational health (engagement) survey. Two things distinguish it from the “old time” employee engagement and satisfaction surveys. One difference is that it is based on current practices of Positive Psychology. The other is that results are available to everyone the moment they submit their data.

As with IBC-Cultures, data can be collected for any groups within an organization. All input is anonymous and not traceable to any individual. Take a test drive at www.ibc-engagement.com/ibc/.

Can we get online with you and talk while you are using the software? We love doing that.
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IBC-IDEAS©

IBC-Ideas is for your employees to suggest ideas for improving the “weak links” identified in IBC-Engagement. Nothing is anonymous and all employees see all ideas and who from. Employees want to be recognized for their great ideas. No training is needed. If employees use Facebook, this software will be a breeze.

After gathering ideas, ideas are rated on a scale of 1-5 for producing a report with ideas in ranked order of importance. IBC-IDEAS is an exceptionally versatile. It can be used for quick answers from members of any group and for any question. For a test drive go to www.ibc-ideas.com/ibc/.

Let’s get online with you and talk while you are using the software?
It is fun for us and we love to show what we have.
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EXECUTIVE ADVISING FOLLOWING ASSESSMENT

The assessment process will identify several possibilities for workplace culture improvements. Some will be simple and require no budget. These are easy to agree upon.

Other suggestions will be more involved in terms of resources, culture, feasibility, timing, and alignment with mission. This is where our broadly experienced consultants can provide support to executives in the form of research, analysis, and a valuable external perspective.

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