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Organisations must manage culture as an asset
Companies have begun to realise that growth calls for a good business culture. The corporate culture can assist in making meaningful and practical business objectives. It would help in the company’s growth. Corporate culture can mean all or some of the following features:
• Coordination and collaboration between different departments of the company
• Problem solving methods and decision making processes
• Recruitment, retention, firing, payment and promotion policies
• The way the organisation reacts to stress and deals with change and conflicts.
Having a sound corporate culture helps the company in times of radical organisational change. Structural and procedural changes can be smooth if the company has an established corporate culture to back it up. It also helps realise business goals easily. Building this culture is a challenge that the leaders have to accomplish.
The leadership of any company must shape and manage culture as an asset and a process. Culture becomes the critical factor during times of change because change can throw everything out of balance. And in the fast-changing business world, paradoxes created are often difficult to understand.
Some of these are long-term goals Vs. short-term focus, speed Vs. stability and consistency Vs. adaptability. Culture balances these paradoxes.
Having recognised the importance of culture it is essential to have a balanced corporate culture to meet organisational goals. Latest research reveals certain winning combinations that help establish this balance:
• Top down management with employee involvement
• Customer responsiveness and stability and consistency in policies
• Short term performance plus long term growth
• Innovativeness and reliability
Acquiring a balanced culture starts with first knowing where the company stands by the cultural parameters.
The Denison Culture Survey can help; this is a survey of over 3000 companies across the world where certain criteria are used to measure the strength of a company’s culture and its relation to business performance with regard to:
• Profitability
• Market share
• Quality
• Sales growth
• Innovation
• Employee satisfaction
The survey measures a company’s success by its ability to bring a sense of balance in its culture while showing growth acceleration. Based on this information a company can determine its position in the culture factor and then work towards establishing a more balanced corporate culture.
Though there is no surefire formula to achieve a balance because of the many variables between companies, the following steps can help companies in this endeavour.
Establish Urgency: The management has to establish a sense of importance and urgency among employees in whatever they do so that the employees do not get into a comfort zone and lose their motivation. The management should be innovative and provide a challenging work environment to employees to ascertain sustained effort and action.
Define direction: The company must have clear and well-defined goals and policies that aim at growth. Everybody in the company must be aware of this grand plan and the benefits in them so that they remain inspired.
Creating a change team: The process of change requires a core, dedicated team of workers. The team must be courageous, creative and capable of organising and bringing about change.
Communicate: Communication is the key for any change process to succeed. This will ensure employee involvement.
Leadership involvement: The leaders themselves must first attempt the suggested changes. Employees will follow suit.
Feedback: An efficient feedback system is the backbone of a change process. A persistent, relentless all inclusive feedback strategy is essential to build a balanced culture and help the company re-invent itself. It should involve everybody from employees to clients.
Utilising these key points in the attempt to build a balanced culture by any organisation can consequently lead to greater business growth.
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