COMPANY CULTURE: AN ORGANIZATION’S FUEL SOURCE
The Collaborative Challenge: How to get your entire organization on the same page…

Culture is defined as a recognized set of principles, beliefs, shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterize a group, population, tribe, organization, community or company. It’s the compilation of what your workforce has in common, believes, and how they act or react within your organization to provide the energy needed to move forward.

Every company culture is unique and is influenced by factors that include the personalities of the leadership, the amount of stress placed on the staff to succeed, the temperament of middle management, the role of politics and the influence of external factors on performance.

A corporation or any organizational culture exists to support the vision by achieving marketing goals. In a perfect world, as the vision grows and expands, so does the culture - not only in size but also in perspective. When a culture is tuned properly it can maneuver between business realities and goals, while still maintaining a high degree of support for the vision.

You can tell a great deal about a company’s culture by the feeling you get inside its walls. We’ve all had experiences in which we’ve noticed that an organization’s culture is out of sync or discordant. An aura of tension pervades the space and the water cooler chatter is peppered with second-guessing and finger pointing commentary.

Culture is a key filtering process that an organization can use to maintain consistency, common cause and market differentiation. It’s the reason BMW is not like Mercedes; German training and engineering, premium materials, audience demographics and price points are similar, yet the people that make them are not; ergo, they are very different brands.

The following is a quick review of some common factors that influence a culture; it may remind you of your own organization and how these variables are affecting you today.

Leadership

The personality of the “boss” influences everybody in the organization either directly or indirectly. Is the boss tough, fair, open-minded, driven, friendly, cold, isolated or connected to the team? However you define it, staff and suppliers etc., typically conform and adapt to meet the boss’s expectations.

What if the boss is moody? One can bet that there is an internal mechanism in the company that gauges the moodiness on a daily or maybe hourly basis and quite possibly someone has the responsibility to alert the rest of the staff. At companies like this, it’s important to deal with the boss when they are in a “good mood.” When a “bad mood” prevails the organization tends to be on edge and although outwardly people inside may seem to be supportive of corporate initiatives, very often they’re guessing and they’re not sure what to think, how to act, and most important what to do. If you’re a boss, consistency can be your best ally.

Stress to Succeed

A culture under stress can be very successful when it’s clear on the goal because it typically reacts to getting results. Winning a contract, increase in market share, profits up, or stock price soaring can be positive motivators for a culture that can handle stress. However when market share dwindles, profits drop or the stock price is eroding the entire team needs to be focused on their daily duties and also aware of the long-term implications. Without a long-term perspective some companies, by reacting to market conditions, create stress that gets in the way of success. For example, putting short-term sales volume ahead of long-term market share and profit gains is a common variable creating stress for organizations and their workforce.

Middle Management

Levels, rank, and bureaucracy are the domains of the middle manager. Middle, because there are just as many responsibilities below them as management above them. Based on their temperament, they can act as bridges or ladders for people to advance, or they can be insulated and distant, becoming more conduit-like than motivational. The most successful cultures are designed to support the corporate vision, which include a strong middle-management force that can articulate policy and provide rationale. Most meaningful adjustments to an organizational culture happen because the middle managers are on the same page.

Politics

As a factor affecting your people, company politics can have a routinely negative influence. It undermines corporate goals in lieu of individual agendas. Politics is about getting ahead without getting hurt in the process. Internal political agenda cause people to take sides, whereas strong positive cultures ignore differences and applaud common cause. The good news about politics is that it’s easy to spot. The bad news is that it’s just as easy to ignore.

External Factors

External factors are anything that happens to an organization that affects its performance but is not caused directly by the organization. Market dynamics, the economy, competitive influences and technological advances all impact business. These external factors always exist to some degree and it is often the strength and the will of your people that determine their impact.

For example, a product innovation that does not sell as well as expected is traced to an internal malfunction. Fixing the malfunction however, can be debilitating and force some internal “finger pointing.” Conversely, a new product that does not sell well because the competition has introduced something better for less can rally the troops to create something that meets the challenge, generating an internal positive dynamic and confident “esprit de corps.” In each case, pressure is put on the organization to make corrections and each can generate a very different internal mantra. A key factor here is in HOW the information is communicated. Putting the right “spin” on a situation can do wonders.

The key in nurturing the culture you want lies in how you impart information and to what extent the team understands the vision and their roles collectively as well as individually. As one person can be infinitely flexible, mobile and impactful, so can a group of individuals that see one goal, seek one ideal or better yet, have one voice. Corporate voice, the articulation of the vision as well as its relationship to its people and culture is what drives organizations to change, to improve, to build and to excel. Good things happen when all of the stakeholders play by the same rules and approach the mission not necessarily with the same intensity, but with the same commitment to excellence.

It is, after all, what Aristotle said that rings true: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.”

In today’s fast changing world, Cultures and the people that form them need to “create” new habits that fulfill individual personal desires and fuel a daily ritual with energy that begets confidence and perpetuates a love for the tasks at hand and an appreciation for how it is changing each of their individual lives and the role that they and the entire team play in achieving the desired goals.

In Summary

Critical to the external success of the brand is the adoption internally of the brand’s power to differentiate. The adoption of a positive posture regarding your organization’s ability to compete externally has a corresponding power to unify the team internally. You can accomplish this by recognizing the importance of building a solid leadership foundation and a vision minded internal corporate culture by applying various aspects of training, testing, coaching and other internal branding options e.g. sub-teams, incentives, etc.

All men may be created equal but they are still all very different and so then too are any and all collections of men or women. How you hire, treat, train, motivate, and participate with each person in the organization creates a unique culture all its own - a culture that when ready and willing, can make the difference between getting there and getting stalled.