Identifying Organizational Culture

What makes working for one company so very different from working for another company, even if the products and services are alike?
Culture is what makes the difference. It is the characteristic that influences how a company handles its day-to-day operations, and it determines how an organization communicates with its employees.
Culture affects the policies and procedures that are implemented. And culture is what gives an organization a different feel from other businesses in the same industry.

Types of culture

Every organization has a culture of sorts. In fact, every organization actually has two cultures.
The visible culture is the one that is expressed in the company's charts, policies, and procedure manuals. This is the organization that is apparent to outsiders.
The shadow organization is the informal day-to-day behavior carried on as a result of tradition and habit. It's what people do, rather than what they say.

The shadow organization is often more powerful than the visible organization. It has its own leaders and unwritten rules of operation. This shadow is influenced by the values and habits of accepted actions and activities.
Think of it as a complex mesh of social forces that influence the behavior of each member of the organization. This makes up the norms of the organization.
Norms of operation are often formed by historical events within the organization. It may be representative of past victories, setbacks, rivalries and feuds. Additionally, this informal organization has these characteristics:

• It has its own communication channels
• It has unofficial networks and cliques
• It may determine how an employee feels

The shadow organization is what typically determines the average employee's experience at work. Interestingly enough, the higher individuals are in the organization, the less in-touch they will be with the understanding of what an average workday is like for an average employee.
Management may be sadly unaware of what the organizational culture really is, even though they are the ones most likely to talk about it.

Understanding the shadow culture
Successful leadership requires that you get in touch with the real culture of your organization. This is an integral part of giving meaning to work.
You can gain awareness of your shadow organization by exploring four areas with your employees. The following provides more information about these areas:

• Discuss how employees feel about themselves
• Determine how employees feel about their jobs
• Identify how employees feel about their teammates
• Explore how employees view the organization

When employees like themselves, their jobs, their teams, and their organization, they are more likely to be happy, energetic, involved, and committed employees. They are also more likely to create that same environment for the other people they work with.
Giving purpose, meaning, and direction to work is a fundamental leadership role. The art of molding an organizational culture that enhances meaning requires a leader who is willing to participate with employees rather than simply direct them.
It takes time and energy. However, the payoff is in having the information that allows you to shape a compelling vision around which employees can rally.

"If you give people freedom, they will amaze you"

Interview with Laszlo Bock, VP, People Operations, Google
Q: Google is seen as a fun and lively place to work for. How do you build and retain that culture?
A: Fun, freedom, interactivity and the ability to explore is vital to this company. We look for very smart people who are creative and adaptable. The second is a formal mechanism to keep our culture going; we have small transforming communities of people that work on a wide range of ideas. The third is through a demonstration of culture and self-monitoring of that culture. For example, we have numerous email lists in the company, and if a person does something that is wildly outside the culture, another person will gently point it out to him.
Q: So there is no hierarchy? Can mistakes be pointed out by someone junior?
A: There is a primacy of ideas and debate here. If you have a compelling idea it doesn’t matter who you are. Our organization structure is simple. Until about 2-3 years ago the most senior title at Google, other than the founders was VP. Two years ago when we added a Senior VP title, that was a big deal for us. While there are some gradations, generally we think of ourselves as individual contributors, managers, directors and VPs.
Q: Do you put the new recruits through a new learning process and do people just learn by doing?
A: It’s a little bit of both. New Googlers are called “Nooglers”. When you join Google, the workstation is decorated with balloons. We say you are a “noogler” till your balloons drop to the ground. We work in small teams of 2-5 people, that helps people to learn by doing. We fundamentally believe that people are good, people are smart and if you just give them freedom they will surprise and amaze you.
Q: How do you account for the 20 percent free time to innovate that Google gives to its people?
A: It’s individually managed; some people spend a little time everyday, some take it all in one go.
Q: Are you the best paymasters in your industry?
A: We think about the total rewards. At Google every employee gets a bonus, then there’s the café, the massage parlor and all our other benefits. We believe in pay for performance and if you are a strong performer you have an opportunity to earn more. Apart from that how much you learn, the environment, the people you work with is equally important. We try to be very competitive in every one of those areas.

Developing a Healthy Culture

For an organizational culture to grow and thrive within your corporate environment, you need to set the example. Maintaining the organizational culture that you desire takes work. It requires teaching, living, and doing at all levels of the organization at all times.
In addition to teaching, you should also be doing. Get involved at all levels and champion cultural change. This will help you pave the way for change to happen. Designing a way for people to monitor their own behavior is important.
If you want people to be accountable, then they need to know how they're doing. Encourage customers to provide online feedback via a message center. This also lets customers know that your company cares about its business.
Teaching and doing are two important steps in helping your culture thrive. The third step is living the culture—making it a natural part of your interactions. As everyone lives the culture, the change will become widespread. It can energize longtime employees and transform people who are new to the company.
The following are strategies for living the culture:

• Rearrange your offices so that people at all levels work side by side. It's easier for the managers to know what's going on, and will also help them to develop rapport with the staff.
• It's not enough just to tell employees the new culture is good for them—you need to show them.
• Make people responsible for budgets, and also give them freedom to make decisions just as they do at home.
• If you're going to live the culture, you need to deal with problems proactively. Get together once a week and talk about where you are and where you want to be. Identify potential problems and work on strategies for managing them proactively.

It's time to start teaching, doing, and living the values you want to define your organizational culture.

Cultural Traits of Performance Organizations

Have you ever noticed that some organizations seem blessed with perpetual good luck, while other organizations seem doomed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?
For the companies that move from success to success, there's probably more involved than just good fortune—it may be their cultures. There are a number of cultural traits that can have a significant effect on organizational performance. These traits are:
# involvement
# consistency
# adaptability
# communication

Involvement:
Does your organization strive to build human capabilities? Do the employees feel a sense of ownership and shared responsibility? If you can answer yes to both of these questions, then your organizational culture exhibits involvement, one of the traits affecting performance.

Use the following methods to encourage and maintain involvement:

• Empower employees with the authority, initiative, and ability to manage their own work. This creates a sense of ownership and responsibility toward the company.
• Place value on working cooperatively toward common goals to which all employees feel mutually accountable.
• Develop capabilities to meet future needs. Invest in the development of your employees' skills.

Consistency:

Organizations that exhibit consistency are able to reach agreement on critical issues. They have the ability to reconcile differences when they occur. Coordination and integration allow different functions and units of the organization to work together well to achieve common goals. Boundaries don't interfere with progress.
Consistency can be achieved by adopting a set of shared values that creates a strong sense of identity and establishes clear expectations.

Adaptability:
Another important cultural trait is adaptability. Adaptable organizations are able to read the business environment, quickly react to current changes, and anticipate future changes. These organizations understand, react to, and anticipate customers' needs.

Communication:
Is it important to share a meaningful long-term direction for your company with employees at every level? Communication is the fourth cultural trait of effective organizations.
Effective communication embodies core values and captures the hearts and minds of the organization, while providing guidance and direction. Clear communications convey the organization's purpose and make it obvious how everyone can contribute. When communication flows in all directions—from the top down, and from the front line upward, every employee feels free to share information, both good and bad.

Cultures vary from one organization to another, and even from one department to another within the same organization. They may differ by individual autonomy, organizational structure, rewards, and interpersonal relationships.

How much influence does a leader have on Organizational culture?

Each employee of an organization is an influencer as far as the organizational culture is concerned but my opinion is that the senior the person, the greater the influence. I would like to illustrate this with a real life case scenario of an organization. Let’s call this organization “ABC Inc”. ABC is headquartered in Bangalore and is in the software services sector. It has a fantastic culture and employee engagement levels are quite high. Employees are encouraged to take time off from their work to have fun, and make office a lively place. It also has a flat hierarchy and every employee is treated as an equal irrespective of their level in the organization.
To strengthen its presence in South India, ABC decided to open a development center in Chennai. It appointed Mr. G as the location head. Mr. G has around 30 years of experience and is quite well known in the industry. He has spent most of his years in organizations which are hierarchical in nature and where there is a clear distinction between people in different grades. He is a person who likes to exercise his powers, use his privileges and enjoys being address as “Sir” by employees.
For the Chennai center staffing, many of the staff from the Bangalore office was transferred to Chennai. Freshers were recruited from different colleges in Tamil Nadu, and then were trained at the Bangalore office and then moved to the Chennai office. Mr.G also brings in a bunch of his old colleagues and these folks assume senior manager positions at the Chennai office.
After 3 months of operation, the Bangalore headquarters start getting complaints from Chennai employees that the culture there sucks. The Headquarters decides to do a secret audit and sends one HR person over to Chennai. The HR person meets with a cross section of the employees and seeks their feedback. He finds that the Chennai office has become very hierarchical and if an employee wants to meet a senior manager, he or she will have to send a request for meeting. It definitely is not following an open door policy. He also sees that the office is quite with minimal interaction between employees.
Even though there is no policy written down that specifies how the working environment should be, the leader’s likes and dislikes get into the system and that influenced the culture. A person who has the power to take decisions, and is high up in the organizational pyramid definitely is an influencer to organizational culture.

Can Google Stay Fun?

Making Google a great place to work has been the plan from the get-go. Co-founder Sergey Brin reveals that even as the company is supersizing itself, it's doing all it can to stay Googley.

Google is unabashedly engineering-centric. Doesn't that irritate the nonengineers?
The fact that we are fairly engineering centric has been misinterpreted to mean that somehow the other functions are less important. The fact is that we want everybody in the company to be innovative. You can see that in our legal or financial work - with the IPO, for example - and with our compensation systems.

Google seems to enjoy thumbing its nose at the outside world. True?
It's important for people to always ask, "Why not?" What's accepted is often arbitrary.

As it gets bigger, does Google risk becoming less zany?
Definitely. At the same time, we have far more resources. If we decided that we need to have a big island for some operations tomorrow, we could afford to buy an island. We have no such plans. But the resources do give us opportunities.

What types of people fail at Google?
I think you have to be flexible. For example, we don't usually tell people what they're working on until they show up, because our priorities might change. So somebody who's really obsessed and needs to know, 'I'm going to be working on X' probably wouldn't enjoy it.

What happens to the culture when Google no longer has the wind at its back?
I think we're going to have our cycles. There's no getting around it. But if you really believe in your mission and your values, as we do, then you ride through the tough times.