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Reshapingorganizationsthroughcultureandsafety.docx
Reshaping organizations through culture and safety
Workplace culture is the collective behavior of people within an organization, including individual and collective values, norms, systems, processes, symbols, and habits. It reinforces the organization’s mission, vision, goals—its overall strategy. The culture influences the brand image of an organization. Although each workplace culture is unique, culture is based on the following elements: • How the work gets done • How decisions are made • Communication within, between, and among work units In First, Break all the Rules, Buckingham and Coffman differentiate between two types of office culture: the “big C,” referring to mission, vision, core values, and strategy, and the “little c,” the day-to-day work unit, team, or department. They suggest that a strong predictor for growing, high-performing organizations is the alignment of these two cultures (Buckingham & Coffman, 1999). Cultures within organizations evolve and change over time. The behaviors of the senior leadership, primarily the CEO, largely shape the culture of an organization. Changing the culture of an organization must be a conscious decision by the senior leadership, demonstrated by changing and modeling desired behavior in words and actions.
Strategy: Articulating the Big Picture Direction
Strategy involves determining the direction of the organization by defining the mission or purpose, the vision or aspiration, and the goal measures for achievement. It is an ongoing, iterative process that evaluates the core business model of an organization and includes assessing a changing environment or industry, outlining core competencies, leveraging competitive advantages, and responding to social, economic, and political forces that determine long-term performance mission impact. The organization’s leadership is responsible for clearly articulating the vision and direction, which involves identifying strategies for responding to industry changes, defining accountability for results, clarifying work processes and systems, allocating resources for priorities, communicating within and among the workforce, and decision-making within the organization. The ways that work gets done and decisions are made and communicated parallel how culture is created, thus reinforcing that culture and strategy are intertwined. In effective, high-performing organizations, strategy drives the execution of the operational day-to-day activities measuring performance targets that link strategies to outcomes and results. Decisions across the organization are focused on strategy implementation, and resources are allocated per defined strategic direction and initiatives.
Culture Eats Strategy; When There Is a Disconnect
Business experts, including Michael Porter of Harvard University, suggest that if there is a conflict or misalignment between culture and strategy, culture will win every time. A frequently cited example of misalignment is when an organization’s strategy is to aspire to growth through innovation and creativity, yet the culture is highly autocratic and hierarchical and bureaucratic systems require that all decision-making be controlled from the top—the CEO and senior leadership. Hierarchical management requires that suggestions or decisions travel up and then down the chain of command, taking time and reducing an organization’s agility. A stall in strategy performance may indicate a disconnect or misalignment between the culture and the strategy. It may be time for a “culture assessment,” including evaluations of systems, procedures, attitudes, behaviors, and incentive rewards. Senior leaders may not have a solid understanding of the real culture and may be out of touch with the existing cultural norms and behaviors of the organization’s workforce. Even though there may be stated core values, frequently those values may be vague and meaningless to the entire workforce. Values are based on a person’s biases, beliefs, personal experience, and perceptions, and no two people experience an organization’s culture the same way. Thus it falls on the shoulders of the CEO and senior-level leadership to embrace and demonstrate any expected and desired behaviors. A large part of changing a culture to ensure greater alignment with strategy starts with building trust and effective two-way communication and walking the talk of the stated core values— that is, linking them with the direction and strategies of the organization. Research over the years has clearly demonstrated that people frequently depart their workplaces because of the poor or negative quality of relationships at work, particularly those with their managers or supervisors. People leave organizations by (1) being terminated or dismissed, (2) departing voluntarily, or (3) remaining with the organization but disengaging from the culture, working with less motivation and inspiration to accomplish the mission strategies. All three groups can negatively affect the culture. Buckingham and Coffman suggest that the “little c” cultures, the work unit relationships between managers and employees, are critical catalysts for high performance (1999). Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, exemplifies the tension between culture and strategy in his famous “bus” metaphor: Get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus, then decide where to go.
Even though there is no “right” culture, whether there’s top-down, hierarchical senior leadership, cross-department collaboration, or some balanced combination, culture drives performance. Culture is difficult to measure and cannot be purchased, imported, or demanded. Changing the culture within an organization is a slow, long-term process and will not happen in a month, or 6 months, or a year. Change can be even more troubling, difficult, and slow if there is a long history of silos with little integration or interdepartmental collaboration on short- or long-term strategies and directions. Change doesn’t happen just because top leadership declares that things have changed. Change is about developing good processes and procedures and solid, effective communication with feedback loops from the workforce, customers/clients, and critical stakeholders. Notably, there are some situations in which a culture change may occur more quickly or in which the current state is disrupted—for example, during a CEO transition, whether through an abrupt dismissal or through the hiring of someone from outside the organization or industry. A new CEO with a clear directive from the board of directors to make significant changes should develop specific strategies to change the culture or direction of the organization. There is less likelihood of culture change when there is a long-term CEO succession plan, including an internal candidate, a clear strategic direction, and plan priorities and effective work processes already in place. Another situation likely to result in culture disruption is after the merger of two organizations. Although on paper and in the decision-making process the joining together may make a lot of sense and appear to be a win–win, there can be a natural divide based on each entity’s unique history, traditions, values, and ways of operating—its culture. Often when a merger is followed by revenue loss or the departure of leadership or other key workforce, the disruptions stem from a culture clash between the merging organizations, and the “us” vs. “them” blame game begins. Inevitably, time is needed for the board of directors, the remaining workforce, and other key stakeholders, possibly from organizations that were previously competitors, to join as one with a common culture, shared goals, and a strategic direction that aligns with those goals. The correct approach by the new senior leadership in aligning the strategy and merging the two cultures will minimize the time needed for a successful integration.
