|
|
|
|||||
|
specialists in enhancement and management of human performance |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you work in a company with more than four employees that's been in business for more than two months, you have an organizational or company culture. It seems that human beings simply cannot hang together for very long without some repetitive interaction beliefs and work strategies showing up. As an executive it is extremely important to know organizational culture because a company's culture is literally, "How we get things done around here." You are inside and a part of that culture. Recall the recent movie line: "Dance with the devil; you don't change the devil. The devil changes you." Just replace devil with organizational culture and you get my point. It seems there is no executive above company culture. In recent years, quite a few migrating wunderkinds have crashed upon the rocks of organizational culture at their new employment. Aside from matching your policies and assignments to your organizational culture, there is yet another critical reason to be vigilant in your understanding of the work context. In the eighties a significant study was undertaken by a number of business academics and behaviorists to ascertain the key qualities that led to employee success. They sought a single trait or constellation of traits that might allow them to predict whether or not someone would be a viable, contributing member of corporate staff. But they couldn't find that magic formula. However, what they did cull out of thousands of interviews and research was just as important. It seems that the only trustworthy predictor of on-the-job success is how closely an individual's work habits match the organizational culture of the company where he/she is employed. Note that success in these studies was defined as both productivity and longevity. So, understanding your organizational culture is key to making the right hiring and deployment decisions, as well as, retaining key talent. Having a firm grasp of your company's culture and its nuances could be an executive edge, especially if you have just changed jobs or assignment levels. By the way, do not rely on corporate literature or web page pronouncements about your company's "leading edge, fun, fast-paced, friendly, team-oriented, productive yet flexible hours, competitive, technologically adept and creative environment." Most of that PR is too general or flat out too bogus to help you. How do you understand and influence your organizational culture? Here are some general and specific questions and techniques. First, candidly ask yourself and your fellow workers, "What is it like to work around here on any given day? What are the beliefs we hold about the way things should be done." Some things to notice are how work gets initiated. What primarily drives it? The marketplace demand, chief competition changes, technological innovation, government or natural environment dictums, individual customers or senior executive whim? Do not wimp out with the "all of the above" answer, but identify the priority of the prime movers in making work at your place of business. One clue may be the answer to When do we drop everything and change focus? In response to what? Our customers, the market, industry, or the boss? As long as you are asking yourself and others these questions, consider the overall dominant form of communication. Is it face to face verbal, or over the phone (desk or cell)? How much written communication (memo, fax or email) is churned out daily? Do specific templates and protocols exist and are they required and followed? Are meetings formally scheduled in advance with agendas or are gatherings ad hoc, spur of the moment affairs? Who decides if a meeting is attended or not? What is the dominant purveyor of critical company information? An intranet, scheduled mail run, conference calls, or gossip chain? What is the level of joking, sarcasm, critique and appreciation that is promoted, condoned or tolerated? Does humor or seriousness prevail? Is the talk about surviving, dominating or making a difference in the business world? Another area of investigation is the physical context of the work environment. Look at your workplace as an alien might. What could simply be observed as one wondered through the workspaces, meeting rooms and breaks areas during a standard workday? Do you really have flexible hours or does the parking lot fill up and empty at specific times each day. Are workloads seasonal? Can people really show up late in the morning or leave early in the afternoon without suffering hazing from coworkers or supervisors? Is there enough supervisory staff around in the wee hours of the morning to appreciate workers who labor into the night? How are desks and work areas arranged? Are executives, managers, supervisors and workers isolated into castes by the physical arrangements of offices? What is the level of administrative technology at each desk? Computer, printer, fax, phone, cell phone, pager, palm or other personal manager? What machines are shared and how often? Are these high tech tools used for more than paperweights and novelty stands? Look at the people at work themselves? What is the predominant dress code? Does company or industry define it? What is the range of acceptability? Don't assume that casual is automatically more tolerant. (Some tied and white-shirted Silicon Valley employees suffer daily ridicule from T-shirted, shorts and sandals coworkers.) How does dress and behavior match? Is the dress casual while the behavior is very formal or visa-versa? Where and when does it change? By day of week, department, management level, contact with the outside world? Also, note diversity in all its aspects: age, gender, ethnicity, language facility, and physical disabilities. Lunchrooms and meetings are great places to observe just how much variety your company has and whether your diversity is truly mixed and whether cliques predominate. In this inquiry, you are looking for repetitive patterns. Also, note that organizational culture always exists on at least two levels. There is an overall company culture and there are several departmental or work division subcultures. Some of these subcultures may be counter to the company's overall work environment. After these cursory observations you should be able to identify the following. Is my company, AT ITS CULTURAL LEVEL, primarily market based, technology based, customer based or owner based? Is the dominating communication verbal or written, formal or informal, personal (face-to-face) or technological (phone, email, fax)? Rate the level of diversity that is accommodated for in terms of hours, personality, and language, as well as the traditionals (age, gender, ethnicity, disability, etc.). In the above summations, force yourself to make choices and to be precise. It may be useful at this point to compare your organizational culture with that of your competitors. Also, it may help to get input from employees who have joined your firm within the last four months from competitors or other industries. They will be able to point out cultural aspects that you will miss if you have been in the organization for a year or more. Finally, here is a more precise set of continuums to apply to the personality of your business. While these concepts were first applied to people's work strategies and styles, I have found them useful in my overall study of numerous businesses. Laboring humans, like birds, tend to flock. That is, we hire and work with people who are much like us. This tendency is augmented by the very nature of commerce where companies have defined products, services and markets, which require certain like skills in many workers. A critical mass of like-minded, individual work strategies and thinking processes will create an organizational culture. Therefore, apply the following behavioral analyses in the context of how the majority of workers in your company (division or department) act. Is the organizational culture dominantly proactive, reactive or an equal mix of both. Proactive companies initiate; they do not wait for others. They jump into markets or situations with little or no consideration and analysis. Reactive enterprises wait for others to go first or wait until a situation has been fully analyzed and the "timing is right". What are the primary value criteria of most of the workers? Listen for value words that are used over and over. "Best price, fastest, most durable, least bugs, most innovative, newest, perfect, reliable, popular, most needed." These words are the clues to the criteria by which the company measures value. What is the primary motivation direction? Is it toward an objective or away from (preventing) problems? Are people more interested in gaining new rewards or paying attention to what should be avoided or gotten rid of. Is the work force more energized by opportunities or by threats? Note, the answer to this question will tell you how to successfully set and attain goals with the people in the organization. Also, of interest is the fact that very few people (and therefore, very few organizations) seem to have both positive and negative in balance. They tend to favor one over the other. What is the primary reference for quality and motivation, internal or external? The guiding question to ask is: How do you know you have done a good job or have a good product? Externally referenced companies use on and trust external sources and need feedback from the outside. Internal referencers tend to rely on their own standards and provide motivation for quality from within. Assumptions about industries are often misleading in this cultural analysis. Many companies that claim to be market driven or strive to attain bandwidth or "space" are extremely internal. Their standards and definitions are highly ethnocentric. While other companies in technical research and innovation can be very externally oriented, constantly seeking to please customers and emerging markets. What is the dominant work flow process, options or procedural? Companies filled with options pattern people are motivated by opportunities to do something in a different or better way. They create procedures and systems but are terrible at following them. And they love opportunities for new ideas or projects, especially those that bend or break existing rules. Procedure patterns like to follow set steps. There is a right way to do things. These companies place a high value on consistency and how to do things. Does work get accomplished through teams, collaboration or individual effort? While every company seems to be touting the virtues of team (see report #5), most companies still organize work around collaboration (individuals working in proximity to each other) or independent effort. Competition still seems to be the rule rather than joint effort. Notice how compensation and results are structured. Finally, how much change does the company culture allow? The majority of us (about 65%) like sameness with some exception. We seek major change only once every 5-7 years. A smaller portion like major change about every three years. And at the extremes, very few actually want continuous change or opposite, no change at all. For all the high tech talk about fast-paced and continuous change, if you look closely at the actual behaviors in the businesses you'll see fairly distinct time patterns. Analyzing your company's overall culture and your department's subculture will give you key insights into how tasks are completed and work is actually accomplished day in and day out. New policies and assignments should consider the organizational culture and should be communicated in a manner congruent to the existing work strategies and beliefs. Learning how to communicate to the above listed tendencies can give an executive enormous power. Understanding organizational culture is most important to your responsibilities in hiring and retaining top talent. You'll want to find people who have had success in organizational cultures similar to your own. This experience is just as important (if not more so) than industry or product experience. You can train people in new products and markets. It is almost impossible to alter their beliefs and strategies about how to get work done. And keep in mind, people will not alter their ways of doing this to fit into your organizational culture. Nor can you change your company's culture by edict or policy alone. The only way to change organizational culture overnight is to fire everyone and hire a new staff with the working behaviors you now want. Otherwise, expect changes to come slowly and only if they are introduced in words and methodologies that appear to be acceptable to the existing culture. Also, one of the easier route to initiate change is through the physical environment. Change workspaces, hours, dress codes, communication protocols. Specific small alterations in well-enforced steps seem to be more effective than massive disruption. This is not easy work. It requires that you, the executive, see and hear things as they are in your workplace, not as you would like them to be. Not as you would like the shareholders, media and marketplace to believe. But the boss who can identify and deal with the company culture as it exists is the only one who can use it to get work done easily. And the only one who can lead it into a new direction and more productive strategy. This hard work of interacting with what's real in your company's culture can be very useful. It's knowing the staff's machinery and formula for productivity from the inside. And working from the inside is great leverage and your executive edge. P.S. For more information on hiring and organizational culture, check out www.interviewedge.com. For communication techniques with various working strategies, try Words that Change Minds by Shelle Rose Charvet, available on the web at Amazon and Barns and Noble. (NOTE: Allies Consulting offers a menu of programs that can help you become masterful at your performance skills, or your staff to do so. They will meet or exceed your expectations: they are designed to deliver real results. They also leverage our other programs, magnifying your ROI!)
|
POBox 9635