Organization Culture

Organization Culture is a Strategic Management (interpret long term) issue and it is a key consideration in many Change Management initiatives, large and small.

In an interview on a 2003 book analysing the failed fortunes of DEC located at www.businessworldindia.com , the author revealed his motivation for the book was to share views regarding the immutable DEC culture, which caused its rapid rise, but later also contributed to its demise due to unwillingness (lacking The Heart Of Change).

It was said in the above source that good Business Managers did exist in DEC, but they had to leave as the company was run by Engineers used to thirty years of success.

In response to using a new Business Model to help effect change, the author suggested culture does not change quickly enough, not in the DEC case.

At the end there are tips offered to how Cultural Change can get supported as a strategic initiative.

Culture as a limiting Factor

Sometimes organizations want to acquire capabilities through hiring new people with proven records elsewhere. And there are instances the tactic had not worked, even after multiple attempts. The blog at blogs.bnet.com suggest one reason is that the existing culture run on a "Oral Tradition". See Quote below:

Injecting even highly competent professionals into a work culture that is fueled and governed by the oral tradition of the Camp Fire school of self-management sets them up for failure

I think in a fast changing world we will see less Business Process (and people) stability, and more reliance on the Oral Culture is inevitable. The blog advocate better documentation of key processes (and their intent) to facilitate communication.

Other mitigation methods include better management of meta-data, and invest in work simplication projects from time to time.

CULTURE - The Soul Of An Organization

Culture Is The Manifestation Of Leadership is valid so long as we recognise their are different tiers of management and so there are local subcultures. I have heard people remarked that we have "dozens of companies under the same brand". For example, the Human Resources function may all refer to the same set of policies, but execution and interpretation can be different.

Where there are differences in culture between different management layers, it create extra barriers for Strategy Execution. This may be a characteristic of larger companies that is hard to change.

It may be useful to take the Twelve Tough Questions Survey, a copy of which can be downloaded at www.poynter.org