From Culture to Execution: How Alignment is Powering a New Era of Organisational Change

In an age where strategy can be copied overnight, execution is fast becoming the true competitive edge. Increasingly, business leaders are recognising that alignment, culture, and connected data are the critical levers for driving sustainable change inside modern organisations.

At the heart of this shift is a clear call to action: stop treating culture as a passive backdrop and start embedding it into the systems that guide how teams work every day.

Rohini Sharma, Head of Go To Market for APJ at monday.com, believes culture only becomes impactful when it’s operationalised — starting with clarity, connection, and purpose.

“Connected data and systems of engagement are the lifeline for sustainable change,” said Sharma. “When employees see in real time how their work impacts company goals, the ‘why’ behind transformation becomes personal. That’s when change sticks.”

monday.com, which helps organisations manage their work through a flexible platform, has made alignment central to its own operating model. The company uses an organisation-wide OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework — built on just three levels, from six global company OKRs through to departments and regions.

According to Sharma, this structure reinforces collaboration while evolving continuously to reflect strategic priorities.

“Alignment is a journey, not a destination,” she said. “And the way we travel that journey — with connected systems, shared goals, and empowered teams — is what makes the difference.”

Creating alignment, however, requires a shift in mindset — from siloed, department-first thinking to an enterprise-wide, customer-centric approach.

Sharma outlines three imperatives for leaders seeking to bridge the strategy-execution gap:

• Radical transparency around goals, progress, and blockers
• Treating data as a common language
• Decentralising decision-making to avoid bottlenecks

“It’s not just the job of transformation teams,” she added. “Every leader needs to create the conditions for alignment to happen — and that starts with visibility.”

Yet that visibility is often missing. Many organisations are awash with data, yet still struggle to connect the dots between individual work and business outcomes. The problem? Much of that data is locked in silos, delayed, or lacks context.

“We don’t just need systems of record,” said Sharma. “We need systems of engagement — platforms that make the connection between execution and impact obvious to everyone.”

This perspective is echoed by Gemma Dias, Head of Data Governance at Tyro Payments, who believes data should be an enabler of confident decision-making — not a blocker.

“Data shouldn’t slow people down — it should speed them up,” said Dias.

“In high-performing organisations, clarity and visibility are what empower teams to move fast and make confident decisions. The right systems don’t just support change — they accelerate it.”

While systems matter, it’s equally critical to equip people with the tools and environment to bring culture to life through their work, says Anthony Perera, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Swinburne University.

“Training is important. Once your data is out there, you need to know where it’s going, what’s being stored, and who’s moving it around. That helps you operationalise how data is used to reinforce your culture and integrate systems and processes into your IT estate safely.”

Sharma offers a practical prompt for leaders to bring alignment into everyday conversations: How does the work we’re doing directly connect to our organisation’s top KPIs?

“You might get a variety of answers,” she said. “But the real opportunity is helping your team focus on the most impactful ones — and then giving them visibility into how they’re progressing.”

Execution, Sharma emphasises, isn’t about managing harder — it’s about enabling people to move with purpose, speed, and ownership.

“When employees see the real-time impact of their work, transformation stops being something that’s done to them,” she said. “They become active participants in making it happen.”

For organisations seeking to embed this kind of alignment, the message is clear: start with culture, activate it through systems, and power it with connected data.