An organization aimed at inspiring businesses to build high performance cultures: Waterstone Human Capital

Founded in 2003, Waterstone Human Capital is a leading cultural talent management professional services firm for organizations across North America that sees culture as their single greatest asset. Waterstone’s team of leadership advisors provides services designed to meet clients’ leadership training, recruitment, and culture and engagement measurement and assessment needs. When your culture is aligned with your strategy, and your leaders are aligned with your culture, you will see enormous engagement from team members – and exceptional results! Waterstone’s leadership team development program, Building High Performance Teams and Cultures, is based on over 30 years of research in leadership, team, and organizational performance.  

This three-module leadership development and change management process is designed to provide leaders with everything they need to put culture at the centre of strategy, build high-performance teams, and take their leadership effectiveness and their organizations to the next level. Delivered virtually or in-person over the course of three to five months, Building High Performance Teams and Cultures is a tailored and highly interactive experience that gives your leaders the tools, focus, and skills they need to demonstrate the five attributes proven to make the biggest difference in the building of high-performance teams and cultures. From corporate performance management to goal-setting, the five attributes below are the building blocks of a high-performing culture and team. They are essential for anyone looking to make an impact on their team and their organization.

Psychological Safety

High performance cannot be achieved and sustained without a psychologically safe environment. Psychological safety is more than an environment based on trust; it requires that leaders enable their team members to demonstrate the candour, accountability, respect, and interpersonal risk taking that are essential to performance. 

Accountability

Accountability occurs when leaders create a collaborative and co-operative environment where team members are empowered to be proactive and to look for opportunities to contribute to the team and to the organization’s success. It is an environment where team members demonstrate the commitment and integrity required to achieve high performance. 

Meaning

Studies show that when people believe their work matters, they are four times more likely to be engaged, far more motivated, learn faster, and more fulfilled. This requires that leaders actively seek to understand what is most meaningful to each of their team members and then align each team members’ individual desire for purpose in their work with the organization’s purpose, vision, and strategy. 

Impact

Impact is about meaningfully recognizing and appreciating team members for their contributions and effort, as well as for the outcomes they achieve. When leaders connect team members to the impact they have on success, team members know their work is valued and as a result productivity, engagement, and motivation are significantly increased. 

Continuous Learning

When leaders foster continuous learning, team members are able to embrace discomfort and agility, and to operate with the ambiguity, flexibility, and risk-taking that is required to thrive in today’s work environment. 

Build a High-Performance Team

Waterstone’s three-module, high-performance leadership program, Building High Performance Teams and Leaders, equips you with the tools, focus, skills, and information you need to help build a high performance team and drive success. 

Waterstone’s Culturepreneur Operating System

Culturepreneurial leaders and organizations see their culture as the means through which they can drive unprecedented levels of innovation, competitive advantage, and performance. Waterstone’s Culturepreneur Operating System supports organizations in doing just that by leading executive leadership teams through a simple, proven, and measurable approach to drive performance through culture transformation. With Waterstone’s Culturepreneur Operating System, your culture will truly become your competitive advantage.  The company will work with you and your leadership team to:

• Assess the current state of your organization’s culture and engagement.
• Paint the picture of the desired culture that will drive your organization’s performance.
• Develop the culture transformation roadmap and scorecard, including key priorities and measures needed to achieve and sustain the desired culture.
• Engage leaders and teams in culture transformation through the building of key leadership competencies and develop the behaviours and practices most essential to building high performance teams and cultures.
• Measure the impact your culture has on your organization’s performance.
• Apply a standard, repeatable, process for putting culture at the center of strategy.

Meet the leader behind the success of Waterstone Human Capital

Marty Parker is Founder and CEO of Waterstone Human Capital. Founded in 2003, Waterstone is a leading cultural talent management firm that offers retained executive search specializing in recruiting for fit, culture change and transformation services, leadership development, succession planning, cultural and engagement measurement, and advisory consulting for entrepreneurial-minded, high growth organizations across North America. In 2005, Marty founded Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures, an annual program that recognizes best-in-class Canadian organizations for having a culture that has helped them enhance performance and sustain a competitive advantage. In 2014, the program expanded to include Canada’s Most Admired CEO.

Marty is considered a global leader and expert on human capital and corporate culture. He is a frequent commentator and keynote speaker on issues surrounding leadership and organizational culture. He is the author of Culture Connection: How Developing a Winning Culture Will Give Your Organization a Competitive Advantage (McGraw-Hill, 2012) and The Culturepreneur: How High Performance Leaders Craft Culture as Competitive Advantage (Page Two, 2021).  Marty is a very active member of Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), in the Great Lakes Ontario and Miami–Fort Lauderdale Gold chapters. He is a member of the YPO Canada Region executive as mentorship chair, and is the former chapter chair, learning chair, network chair, membership chair, forum chair and current engagement chair for YPO Great Lakes Ontario. Marty holds a bachelor of arts with honors, as well as a Master of Science degree in marketing from the University of Guelph. He and his wife, Tanya, live in Mississauga and Huntsville Ontario, and Delray Beach, Florida, and they are the parents of five children. A serial entrepreneur, Marty loves sports, coaching, fitness, food and wine, reading, and personal and professional development.

“In building the right culture for success, you need the right people. From executives to managers, we will help shape your organization at the highest levels”