Culture Care Technologies
  Human Resource & Organization Development Specialists in Company Culture

A Summary of Imperatives For Managing Company Culture

A running summary of insights from Case Studies #1 to #37. (Bracketed case studies provide related background material):

1. Every company has a culture

2. A company's culture works for or against it

3. Cultural beliefs tend to go unnoticed until they are noticeably ineffective

4. Culture management sooner is better than later

5. Managing the development of company culture begins with mission, strategy, vision, values and beliefs.

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1. Every company has a culture

Every organization develops a culture. The directly observable level of “the way we do things around here ” includes customs, practices and norms. The hidden layer of company culture --“the way we think around here” -- is the system of shared, basic, taken-for-granted assumptions, beliefs and values that members have learned to see the world through and think from. (see Case Study #22)

Since an organization is made up of a number of groups, it actually has a number of cultures (e.g., the executive team, the customer support department, the engineering division, the organization as a whole). Organizations are multi-cultural entities with varying degrees of overlap in norms, beliefs and values. It is this area of overlap that makes up the corporate or company culture. (See Case Study #5)

Like a biological culture in a petri dish, the culture of an organization is enveloped in a climate or environment. A climate survey is a popular method for assessing the ‘health' of an organization's work environment. Typical criteria include trust in management and employees having a sense of being valued, respected and treated fairly. A sufficiently healthy climate is the prerequisite for developing an effective culture. (See Case Studies #29, & #13)

2. A company's culture works for or against it

Just as our individual beliefs and values significantly impact how we see and make sense of the world, the shared cultural assumptions held among and between members of an organization are always at work for or against a company. An effective culture, one that works for the company, meets three basic criteria:

• Supportive. The shared beliefs and values support adherence to the mission, implementation of the strategy and, over the long term, realization of the organization's vision.
• Integrative. An integrative culture is one in which the underlying assumptions are widely shared and deeply held; they penetrate deeply into the collective mindset.
• Adaptive. Ongoing 'evolutionary' adaptiveness is the flexibility needed to respond to the many unknowables in the external environment.

3. Cultural beliefs tend to go unnoticed until they are noticeably ineffective

At the visible level of culture, counterproductive norms are relatively easy to spot. For example, when the cultural norm is to criticize first and always, creativity can be severely hampered. Simply bringing the norm to peoples' attention and assessing its impact can help them learn a new pattern of expected and acceptable behaviour; particularly when it is supplemented with some relevant skills and knowledge training.

At the hidden level – “the way we think around here” – ineffective cultural beliefs tend to go unnoticed until they are distinctly ineffective. Their negative effect has been likened to a ‘glass ceiling' on company performance; an apt description given that they are hidden from direct observation.

One of the more dramatic examples of an ineffective culture going unnoticed is that of NASA in the Columbia space shuttle disaster of 2003. "In our view," wrote the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in its report, "the NASA organizational culture had as much to do with this accident as the foam". Less dramatic examples include the British Broadcasting System (Case #21), Dell Computer (Case#12), IBM (Case #8) and Marriot (Case #2).

4. Culture management sooner is better than later

Size doesn't matter – it's never too soon to begin to manage the development of a productive company culture. (See Case Studies #25 & #26). Sooner, in terms of size and/or age of the company, affords several important advantages over later:

• Rather than having to undo the damage of an ineffective culture, culture management can focus exclusively on developing a highly effective culture, the business asset equivalent of a ‘performance enhancing steroid'. (See Case Study #7)
• Over the long term, influencing behaviour at the level of learned beliefs and values is far more cost effective than through endless directives and countless hours enforcing policies and rules. For time-strapped owners, yearning to work on the business rather than in the business, there's no better investment than working on the development of an effective culture.
• Leaders can add the leveraging of culture to their array of leadership tools. (see Case Study #31)
• The longer an ineffective culture is allowed to develop on its own, the greater the number of counter productive beliefs and the more widely shared and deeply held they are among a larger number of people.
• An established practice of ongoing managed cultural learning establishes learners' trust and competence in this unique and challenging learning process. (See Case Studies #9, #16 & #18)
• If an unavoidable need for cultural transformation arises (e.g., when a monopoly's industry is deregulated), the time and effort previously invested in ongoing, ‘evolutionary' adaptive cultural learning provides the foundation for a successful transformation.

5. Managing the development of company culture begins with mission, strategy, vision, values and beliefs.

The overwhelming majority of North American companies have begun to manage the development of their cultures by articulating a strategy, mission, vision and set of core values. What's usually missing is the comparatively difficult step of agreeing on and documenting the strategically requisite core beliefs required to accomplish the mission, implement the strategy and, over the long term, realize the organization's vision.

For example, the term “quality” may appear in a company's mission, vision and core values. But until company members agree on and commit to a shared core belief regarding the nature and dynamics of quality (e.g., that quality is everyone's responsibility vs. quality is management's responsibility) their core ideology is incomplete.

Without the beliefs component of the core ideology, it's impossible to help members learn how to see the world through and think from the system of values and beliefs required to fulfill the strategy, mission and vision. Other vital aspects of culture development -- recruitment, hiring and orientation, performance management and compensation systems, employee engagement, commitment, organizational vitality -- are similarly hampered. (See Case Studies #28, #23, #30, #20, #15, & #10)