TL;DR
- All organizations have culture, and that culture has major effects on how decisions are made, how information is passed around, and the results that you deliver
- Change the culture, change the behavior, change the results
Notes
- There is no right way to describe culture, the only benefit from defining it is the insights and results you get from that
- Culture = the things, sayings, doings, and feelings that are shared
- Norms are not values
- You can value one thing while doing another (it’s more common than not)
- Efficiency is not effectiveness
- You can be very efficient, but it doesn’t mean it results in a better outcome
- What exactly is culture? See below
- Basic organization process
- Communication
- certain things go without saying (a.k.a. shared values and beliefs, a.k.a. culture) e.g. You don’t need to communicate to not to be rude to a customer if it’s a shared value
- So it’s important to know what to communicate and how openly
- Cooperation
- Letter of the law (following a rule word-for-word) vs spirit of the law (following the essence of the rule)
- Sometimes adhering strictly to a rule can lead to worse outcomes
- Cooperation among your staff cannot be forced
- Cooperation is influenced by culture
- Letter of the law (following a rule word-for-word) vs spirit of the law (following the essence of the rule)
- Commitment
- When someone identifies personally with a company’s objective, there’s some emotional attachment there
- This makes employees more likely to act in the interest of the organization
- Decision-making
- Culture give basic assumptions adn preferences for decisions
- e.g. a front desk worker can give a discount based on the principle of helping the customer
- This means less disagreements, conflict, and dependency, and more efficient decision-making
- Culture give basic assumptions adn preferences for decisions
- Implementation
- Shared values can clash
- e.g. Customer service vs ethics The client wants an anti-religious element in their ad, but that goes against your company values, what do you do?
- Culture gives a “compass” for decision-making, or guiding principles
- Try to rank the values for those tricky situations
- Shared values can clash
- Communication
- Some cultures have stronger influences on behavior
- many shared values and beliefs
- more widely shared
- more ordered/ ranked values
- Strength of culture
- affected by size (smaller = stronger)
- geographical location (more spread out = weaker)
- Judging if someone will be a good fit when hiring
