“Organizational culture defines a jointly shared description of an organization from within.”
— Bruce Perron
In the corporate world, organizational culture is often a debatable topic with little consensus on what it actually is. Sociologists and researchers have done several studies on how culture influences behavior and whether leaders can bring an acceptable change to it.
Organizational culture varies with each company by its size, type, and people. This makes the phenomenon even more complex because, without a reasonable definition of culture, it would be a challenge to understand its relationship to other key elements of the organization, such as structure and incentive systems. Lack of its clarity could discourage us to build a definitive approach to analyze, retain and transform cultures. If we can define what organizational culture is, it could give us an upper hand on how to diagnose problems and to design and develop better cultures.
What is Organizational Culture?
The contemporary definition of Organizational Culture includes “the dominant leadership style, the language and symbols, the procedures and routines, and the definitions of success that characterizes an organization” (Schein, 1992; Cameron & Quinn, 1999). Culture is a specific collection of acceptable values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization. It controls the way people inside the organization interact with each other and with stakeholders outsidethe organization.
In many ways, Culture is like personality. In a person, the personality is made up of the values, beliefs, underlying assumptions, interests, experiences, upbringing, and habits that influence a person’s intuitions and instincts.
An organization’s culture makes up all the life experiences each employee contributes to the organization. Culture is primarily influenced by the organization’s founder, senior executives, and other managerial staff. That is because of their roles in decision-making and strategic direction. Nevertheless, every employee also has a significant effect on the culture that is developed at work.
Despite its contradictory characteristic, every organization has a culture, whether by default or by design. Building a strong and healthy organizational culture is not just about a good compensation package, a conducive work environment, and a few team-building activities; it is about anchoring everything that we do in a certain philosophy or set of beliefs and values.
Managing Organizational Culture
An organization which values work-life balance would see it exemplified in all of its processes and structures. A simple example would be how meetings are conducted (do meetings allow for conference calling to accommodate telecommuters? are meetings constantly called at 4.30pm not allowing people to leave office on time?), how are rewards and recognition conferred (do people who work overtime get bigger bonuses and promotions?). Simply put, do our policies match our stated values?
Many business owners would like to become an “employer of choice” and aspire to the “Top 100 Best places to work”. But how? By building an on-site gym with free massage and yoga classes? That would only serve as short-term motivators for employees. Many studies have shown that what employees really want is a workplace that not only provides those types of benefits but also creates an environment where people feel valued, respected and where they feel like they make an important contribution. Think about it, if you treat people with disrespect, provide no recognition or positive reinforcement; a nice massage may take the sting out for a while but quickly the pain returns.
Hence, building a strong and healthy organizational culture should essentially include more than a few perquisites that create a nice appearance from the surface. What really matters is what people will find when they dig below the surface.
In the past two decades, the concept of organizational culture has gained widespread acceptance as a roadmap to understanding human systems. We now consider each aspect of organizational culture as an important environmental condition affecting the system and its subsystem. Globalization, increased competition, mergers, acquisitions, alliances, and various workforce categorizations have created a greater need for organizational culture. Thus, it has become a critical element for the organization’s overall development.
Key Elements of Organizational Culture:
- It compassionately focuses attention on the human side of organizational life and finds significance and understanding even its most ordinary aspects.
- It clarifies the importance of creating appropriate systems of shared values to help people work together toward desired outcomes and better productivity.
- It requires members, especially leaders, to acknowledge the impact and consequences of their actions on the organization’s culture. For example, the airline industry.
- Organizational culture is possibly the most critical factor determining an organization’s capacity, effectiveness, and continuity. It also contributes significantly to the organization’s brand image and brand promise. For example, Apple and its products.
- Organizational Culture creates energy and momentum. The energy will penetrate through the organization and create a new momentum for success.
The relevance of organizational culture mentioned above asserts the consideration that, in this competitive and globalized corporate scenario, there is a huge need of organizational development strategy at various workforce departments, as this can improve the company’s culture and consequently the output.
Influencing the Culture of Your Organization
There are four primary ways to influence the culture of an organization.
- Emphasize what’s important. This includes the vision of the organization, posting the mission statement on the wall, talking about accomplishments to inspire and setting goals by repeating what you want to see in the workplace.
- Reward employees with incentives whose behaviors reflect what’s important.
- Discourage behaviors that reflect what’s unimportant. Avoid punishments or cause prolonged discomfort. Rather, you want to counsel the employee from continuing unwanted behaviors by giving them constructive feedback, verbal and written warnings, or firing them.
- Role model the behaviors that you want to see in the workplace. This is perhaps the most powerful method to influence behaviors in the workplace. For example, if you want to see more teamwork among your employees, then involve yourself in teams more often.
To some extent, we can compare culture to natural forces such as winds and tides. These elements are always there in the background; sometimes unnoticed, sometimes obvious. Endowed with immense power, they can even damage plans and restrain progress. They can’t really be tamed or fundamentally altered. Instead, if you respect them and understand how to make the most of them, if you work with them and tap into their hidden power, they can become a source of energy and be the wind beneath the wings.
Organizational Culture Assessment
The best way to start is to introspect with a series of questions:
What are the most important emotional forces that determine what your people do?
What few behavior changes would matter most in addressing strategic and operational directives?
Who are the authentic informal leaders you can enlist?
And what can you and your fellow senior leaders do differently to invoke and reinforce those critical behaviors?
Conclusion
Of course, you shouldn’t anticipate dramatic results overnight. You should envision an evolution, not a revolution. One of the challenges of working with culture is that it changes gradually; that’s the bad news. What about the good news? If you approach culture with respect and intelligence, as a milieu in which you and your enterprise live, you can use it to speed up your competitive momentum. There’s no better time than the present tostart.
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HOW CAN WE HELP YOU WITH YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE?
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