Tuesday, September 25, 2007

"That won't work! You don't understand the culture here..."

How many times have you heard that? A project seems to be aligned with business goals, the ROI has been evaluated and re-evaluated, but upon introducing it to the actual performers of the impacted processes, tasks, and outputs; the culture alarm is sounded. Quite often, this is the beginning of a difficult project path with resistance being met at every turn.

Once a project leader, often the Project Manager, is stuck with this problem they have two options: either stop to evaluate the culture and how it would align with project outcomes, or continue forward and try to appease the culture issues as they happen.

Before going any further, what does organizational culture actually mean? Organizational culture is the personality of the organization, departments and/or geographic locations of an organization can have different cultures from each other and the greater organization. Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, and norms (communication methods, methodologies, etc.) of organization members and their behaviors. Members of an organization soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization. This “sense” is difficult to capture and seems, from a project perspective, to be a component of project readiness.

Unfortunately, some organizations use “culture” as a means to prevent change. Culture used this way makes it a critical challenge for change management.

I have been working on a program called the People Snapshot ™ to define many of the pieces that make up the organizational culture and by doing so help organizational leaders plan and deploy appropriately while addressing the values of the people who make up the organization.

The dimensions to this are many; here are the ones that I am trying to address first:
O Change Management Tolerance
O Communications Preferences and Effectiveness
O Cultural Dynamics
O Environmental Responsibility
O Generational Mix (Baby Boom, Gen X, Gen Y)
O Management (Trust in Leadership)
O Technological Savvy

Please use this blog for your stories (good or bad) with organizational culture and how they turned out.

If you’re interested in learning more about the People Snapshot™, visit http://www.enterprisesolved.com/.

3 comments:

seastman said...

It's great to see someone addressing the fact the company culture in many instances has been hijacked by naysayer as a means to maintain the status quo. Corporate initiatives are usually at the mercy of those who have been there the longest and have an aversion to risk or change. Culture should be a unify component of any organization that allows it to rally its personnel around goals or initiatives for the good for the company and the community it services. Corporate culture should also be flexible from the perspective of being able absorb new Talent/Personnel and ideas. Used and monitored culture is an asset to any company.

Anonymous said...

Very interesting indeed, John. It reminds me quite a bit of my father's work at MIT in the 60's. He was a psychiatrist (soft scientist) in the midst of a hard science world. He studied the effect of the formal curriculum at MIT on freshmen entering the university, and how they created their own curriculum in response to the combined demands of their many courses. He wrote a book in the 70's titled "The Hidden Curriculum".

I think you're on to something very important and often ignored. I'll have to take some time and blog on my own experiences as a middle manager in a corporate pyramid that illustrate what your talking about. I'll also pass your link on to my father.

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of the case at Xerox, when a leadership change resulted in the demise of what was an envied corporate culture. Numerous white papers were written on the topic, one example is
http://www.icmr.icfai.org/casestudies/catalogue/Human%20Resource%20and%20Organization%20Behavior/HROB015.htm

On the other hand, GE continues to promote a strong learning culture through investing i training and innovative programs like Work-Out. Training and education initiatives help in improving employee productivity and performance. These include GE's e-learning initiatives.

http://www.icmr.icfai.org/casestudies/catalogue/Human%20Resource%20and%20Organization%20Behavior/Training%20and%20Development-GE%20Way-Human%20Resource%20Management-Case%20Studies.htm

- Brian