Is it possible to manage organizational culture

Start creating a culture that means business by scheduling a demo of Achievers Recognize or Achievers Listen today. Natalie Baumgartner. She shares how an aligned, thoughtful culture connects the workforce, motivates employees, and provides a cause to rally behind.

What is organizational culture? The importance of culture to your company Organizational culture affects all aspects of your business, from punctuality and tone to contract terms and employee benefits. Exceptional organizations work to build continuous alignment to their vision, purpose, and goals. Appreciation can take many forms: a public kudos, a note of thanks, or a promotion. A culture of appreciation is one in which all team members frequently provide recognition and thanks for the contributions of others.

Trust is vital to an organization. With a culture of trust , team members can express themselves and rely on others to have their back when they try something new. Performance is key, as great companies create a culture that means business. In these companies, talented employees motivate each other to excel, and, as shown above, greater profitability and productivity are the results. Resilience is a key quality in highly dynamic environments where change is continuous. A resilient culture will teach leaders to watch for and respond to change with ease.

Teamwork encompasses collaboration, communication, and respect between team members. When everyone on the team supports each other, employees will get more done and feel happier while doing it. Integrity , like trust, is vital to all teams when they rely on each other to make decisions, interpret results, and form partnerships. Honesty and transparency are critical components of this aspect of culture.

Innovation leads organizations to get the most out of available technologies, resources, and markets. A culture of innovation means that you apply creative thinking to all aspects of your business, even your own cultural initiatives. Psychological safety provides the support employees need to take risks and provide honest feedback. Remember that psychological safety starts at the team level, not the individual level, so managers need to take the lead in creating a safe environment where everyone feels comfortable contributing.

Excel in recognition Recognizing the contributions of all team members has a far-reaching, positive effect on organizational culture. Enable employee voice Creating a culture that values feedback and encourages employee voice is essential, as failing to do so can lead to lost revenue and demotivated employees. Forge connections between team members Building a workplace culture that can handle adversity requires establishing strong connections between team members, but with increasingly remote and terse communication, creating those bonds can be challenging.

Focus on learning and development Great workplace cultures are formed by employees who are continually learning and companies that invest in staff development. Personalize the employee experience As modern consumers, your employees expect personalized experiences , so you need to focus on ways to help each team member identify with your culture.

Developing culture made easy Organizational culture will develop even without your input, but in the absence of that guidance, it may not be healthy or productive. Connect with Kellie on LinkedIn. Activate employee participation and fuel a culture of performance to experience data-driven business results. Those that lean toward the latter emphasize integration, managing relationships, and coordinating group effort.

People in such cultures tend to collaborate and to see success through the lens of the group. Whereas some cultures emphasize stability—prioritizing consistency, predictability, and maintenance of the status quo—others emphasize flexibility, adaptability, and receptiveness to change. Those that favor stability tend to follow rules, use control structures such as seniority-based staffing, reinforce hierarchy, and strive for efficiency. Those that favor flexibility tend to prioritize innovation, openness, diversity, and a longer-term orientation.

Kim Cameron, Robert Quinn, and Robert Ernest are among the researchers who employ similar dimensions in their culture frameworks. By applying this fundamental insight about the dimensions of people interactions and response to change, we have identified eight styles that apply to both organizational cultures and individual leaders.

Caring focuses on relationships and mutual trust. Work environments are warm, collaborative, and welcoming places where people help and support one another. Employees are united by loyalty; leaders emphasize sincerity, teamwork, and positive relationships. Purpose is exemplified by idealism and altruism. Work environments are tolerant, compassionate places where people try to do good for the long-term future of the world. Employees are united by a focus on sustainability and global communities; leaders emphasize shared ideals and contributing to a greater cause.

Learning is characterized by exploration, expansiveness, and creativity. Work environments are inventive and open-minded places where people spark new ideas and explore alternatives.

Employees are united by curiosity; leaders emphasize innovation, knowledge, and adventure. Enjoyment is expressed through fun and excitement. Work environments are lighthearted places where people tend to do what makes them happy. Employees are united by playfulness and stimulation; leaders emphasize spontaneity and a sense of humor. Results is characterized by achievement and winning. Work environments are outcome-oriented and merit-based places where people aspire to achieve top performance.

Employees are united by a drive for capability and success; leaders emphasize goal accomplishment. Authority is defined by strength, decisiveness, and boldness. Work environments are competitive places where people strive to gain personal advantage. Employees are united by strong control; leaders emphasize confidence and dominance.

Safety is defined by planning, caution, and preparedness. Work environments are predictable places where people are risk-conscious and think things through carefully. Employees are united by a desire to feel protected and anticipate change; leaders emphasize being realistic and planning ahead.

Order is focused on respect, structure, and shared norms. Work environments are methodical places where people tend to play by the rules and want to fit in. Employees are united by cooperation; leaders emphasize shared procedures and time-honored customs.

These eight styles fit into our integrated culture framework according to the degree to which they reflect independence or interdependence people interactions and flexibility or stability response to change. Styles that are adjacent in the framework, such as safety and order, frequently coexist within organizations and their people.

In contrast, styles that are located across from each other, such as safety and learning, are less likely to be found together and require more organizational energy to maintain simultaneously. Each style has advantages and disadvantages, and no style is inherently better than another. An organizational culture can be defined by the absolute and relative strengths of each of the eight and by the degree of employee agreement about which styles characterize the organization.

On the basis of decades of experience analyzing organizations, executives, and employees, we developed a rigorous, comprehensive model to identify the key attributes of both group culture and individual leadership styles. Eight characteristics emerge when we map cultures along two dimensions: how people interact independence to interdependence and their response to change flexibility to stability. The relative salience of these eight styles differs across organizations, though nearly all are strongly characterized by results and caring.

The spatial relationships are important. Proximate styles, such as safety and order, or learning and enjoyment, will coexist more easily than styles that are far apart on the chart, such as authority and purpose, or safety and learning.

Achieving a culture of authority often means gaining the advantages and living with the disadvantages of that culture but missing out on the advantages and avoiding the disadvantages of a culture of purpose. Inherent in the framework are fundamental trade-offs.

Although each style can be beneficial, natural constraints and competing demands force difficult choices about which values to emphasize and how people are expected to behave. It is common to find organizations with cultures that emphasize both results and caring, but this combination can be confusing to employees.

Are they expected to optimize individual goals and strive for outcomes at all costs, or should they work as a team and emphasize collaboration and shared success? The nature of the work itself, the business strategy, or the design of the organization may make it difficult for employees to be equally results focused and caring.

In contrast, a culture that emphasizes caring and order encourages a work environment in which teamwork, trust, and respect are paramount. The two styles are mutually reinforcing, which can be beneficial but can also present challenges. The benefits are strong loyalty, retention of talent, lack of conflict, and high levels of engagement.

Savvy leaders make use of existing cultural strengths and have a nuanced understanding of how to initiate change. Top leaders and founders often express cultural sentiments within the public domain, either intentionally or unintentionally. Having a deeper, more transcendent purpose is highly energizing for all of the various interdependent stakeholders. And when we are setting the rules for the securities markets, there are many rules we, the SEC, must follow.

In the battle with lions, wolves have terrifying abilities. With a strong desire to win and no fear of losing, they stick to the goal firmly, making the lions exhausted in every possible way.

The eight styles can be used to diagnose and describe highly complex and diverse behavioral patterns in a culture and to model how likely an individual leader is to align with and shape that culture. Using this framework and multilevel approach, managers can:.

Our research and practical experience have shown that when you are evaluating how culture affects outcomes, the context in which the organization operates—geographic region, industry, strategy, leadership, and company structure—matters, as does the strength of the culture. Consider the case of a best-in-class retailer headquartered in the United States.

The company had viewed its first priority as providing top-notch customer service. It accomplished this with a simple rule—Do right by the customer—that encouraged employees to use their judgment when providing service. In measuring the culture of this company, we found that like many other large retailers, it was characterized primarily by a combination of results and caring. Unlike many other retailers, however, it had a culture that was also very flexible, learning oriented, and focused on purpose.

As the retailer expanded into new segments and geographies over the years, the leadership strove to maintain an intense customer focus without diluting its cherished culture. Although the company had historically focused on developing leaders from within—who were natural culture carriers—recruiting outsiders became necessary as it grew.

The company preserved its culture through this change by carefully assessing new leaders and designing an onboarding process that reinforced core values and norms. Culture is a powerful differentiator for this company because it is strongly aligned with strategy and leadership. Delivering outstanding customer service requires a culture and a mindset that emphasize achievement, impeccable service, and problem solving through autonomy and inventiveness.

Not surprisingly, those qualities have led to a variety of positive outcomes for the company, including robust growth and international expansion, numerous customer service awards, and frequent appearances on lists of the best companies to work for.

The chief executive of an agriculture business was planning to retire, spurring rumors about a hostile takeover. The CEO was actively grooming a successor, an insider who had been with the company for more than 20 years. Our analysis revealed an organizational culture that strongly emphasized caring and purpose. The potential successor understood the culture but was far more risk-averse safety and respectful of traditions order than the rest of the company.

Given the takeover rumors, top leaders and managers told the CEO that they believed the company needed to take a more aggressive and action-oriented stance in the future.

The board decided to consider the internal candidate alongside people from outside the company. Cultural dynamics are a frequently overlooked factor in postmerger performance. Three external candidates emerged: one who was aligned with the current culture purpose , one who would be a risk taker and innovative learning , and one who was hard-driving and competitive authority. After considerable deliberation, the board chose the highly competitive leader with the authority style. Soon afterward an activist investor attempted a hostile takeover, and the new CEO was able to navigate through the precarious situation, keep the company independent, and simultaneously begin to restructure in preparation for growth.

Mergers and acquisitions can either create or destroy value. However as all of the management systems and processes remained focused on getting out the lending program, the mission statement has still had little operational impact. The organization became more decentralized, with a younger and less experienced staff, but not fundamentally different. It was a still a bank lending money for development, in accordance with the systems that McNamara had put in place almost forty years before.

Wolfensohn did have a vision for the organization as an organization dedicated to relieving poverty, but failed to put in place the management systems that would support and reinforce that vision. As a leading neoconservative, and Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz was a major architect of President Bush's Iraq policy and its most hawkish advocate.

His appointment as president of the World Bank was controversial. Wolfowitz arrived with a change agenda to move the organization towards a more conservative stance. He tried to do this by bringing on board some of his neoconservative lieutenants as managers. By and large, the organization, which has no tradition like the US government of bringing in new managers from outside, responded like an immune system reacting to invading pathogens.

After serving a tumultuous two years, Wolfowitz resigned, following revelation of a promotion that he had arranged for his companion. Obviously, a personal scandal brings any change effort to a screeching halt. As he enters the final year of his five-year term, there is no indication from President Obama as to whether he wants the former Bush hand to stay on. Zoellick has made no statement about his own plans.

As of mid, the World Bank remains a slow-moving traditional hierarchical bureaucracy, with an inward-looking perspective. The mission statement of dedicating the organization to the relief of poverty is largely unsupported by the management roles, systems and structures which still drive the organization to focus mainly on lending for individual development projects. While filled with talented staff, the organization as a whole is underperforming. It lacks the agility to cope with the diverse challenges that the world now faces.

Overall, the World Bank is desperately in need of a radical change in management. If no change occurs, it will become less and less relevant.

If the next president is to achieve the needed change, he or she should learn from the success of Robert McNamara and the failures of his successors, as well as other successful change efforts in large organizations, such as Alan Mullaly at Ford [F] or even Steve Jobs at Apple [AAPL]:. Follow Steve Denning on Twitter stevedenning. This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here. More From Forbes. Nov 10, , pm EST. Nov 10, , am EST. Edit Story.