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| What is the culture of your organisation and why it matters. |
I used to think that all this organisational culture stuff was tosh and the stuff of dreams and illusions but I have been proved wrong - not for the first time. Work by the Pacific Institute shows that organisational culture can be measured and that it does matter for organisational performance. Organisations grow, decay or are in a state of inertia. States of inertia can quickly lead to decay whereby an organisation starts to lose market share profitability and product quality -- We need to ensure that organisational culture does not contribute\drive such decay or else we are all in trouble.
Research undertaken by the Pacific Institute demonstrates that some 70% percent of organisations are defensive and only 30% are constructive . Whilst only around 30% of the workforce are fully engaged in their organisations 70% are not. Just imagine what we would get with full engagement?
Defensive cultures can be passive or aggressive. The main characteristics of a passive defensive culture are:
An approval culture -- Which means that conflicts are avoided and interpersonal relationships appear superficially calm but there is no constructive differing or expression of ideas. There is always a need to seek everyone's approval.
A conventional culture -- Organisations are traditional and everyone is expected to conform and follow the rules
A dependent culture -- Organisations which are hierarchically controlled and non-participative.
An avoidance culture -- Organisations which fail to reward success but do punish failure. This negative rewards system forces people to push responsibility to others and therefore to avoid blame for failure. New initiatives are avoided
Does this sound familiar?
An aggressive defensive culture is characterised as follows;
An oppositional culture - Members gain status by being critical oppose the ideas of others and make safe but ineffectual decisions. If its not their idea then it will go nowhere fast.
A power culture -- A non-participative approach where power control is rewarded and workers hold back from making any other future contributions because they are disenfranchised. Self promotion is the best approach
A competitive culture - You must win and therefore someone else must lose and this torpedoes effective joint working. Internal competition is more important than what your external competitors are doing
A perfectionist approach -- Everything must be perfect even if it does not need to be or resources should be focused on other priorities which really require this more. nothing is ever good enough
Does this also sound familiar?
Defensive organisations are over managed and under lead. They eat up overhead costs and reduce final profits considerably. Interestingly -- the passive defensive approach is probably more dangerous to an organisation in the long term because people do not realise what is happening to them.
We should be heading for a constructive organisational culture whose features include;
An achievement culture -- Always recognising success and achievement.
A self actualisation culture -- Always value creativity and quality over quantity. This leads to high level innovation and product quality.
A humanistic culture. Organisations which are managed in a person centred and participative way. Organisations are supportive and constructive.
An affiliative culture - Colleagues are friendly and open leading to constructive working relationships and a pride in working for that organisation
Those organisations which move more to a constructive organisational culture -- can increase their bottom lines by 5 or 6 times those which do not.
The trick is to try and move your organisation or at least the part of it that you are responsible for,into a more constructive type culture. The challenge is that maybe all of your organisation will not come with you. However you can show by example, that your bit of the organisation is performing well in a constructive organisational sense. Hopefully other parts of your organisation will see the light?
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