(Part 2)

Clearly before you go about changing the Company culture you need to be equipped with enough
data on 2 distinctive stages of your Culture,

1. The Current state of the Culture

2. The Target state of the Culture

If one goes around the company and asks people at random to describe their organizational culture,
one would get the description from the lens of the individual who perceives the culture based on the
vantage point s/he is located on. Therefore, one might get as many descriptions as the number of
people one asks. While these descriptions collectively might give us a sense of the overall culture or
at least some characteristics of the same, clearly one cannot design a transformation plan based on
such unstructured perceived descriptions of a company culture. What we need is a measurement
against a well-defined model which is validated by scientific research.
We at HI use HI’s 8 dimensional Multi-Focus Model to measure Current State of Culture by
administering 70 + questions to the target audience and running analytics on the answer pattern of
the group. The design of the questions and the analyses of the data ensure that we get unbiased
measure of the current culture. Apart from the scores of the current culture in each dimension of
the model ( https://hi.hofstede-insights.com/multi-focus-model) , the scan report provides a host of insights into multiple aspects such as Cultural identity, trust & security level in the company, acceptance of leadership style, level of
engagement of people, ease / difficult to change etc.

While getting the current state of the Company culture is obtained by measuring responses from the
target group through a well researched set of questionnaire, determining the target culture is more
difficult.
Why ? Because to get to determine what kind of Culture we should have in our organization, there
must be clear understanding of the purpose, vision, strategic intent and values of the organization.
The organizational culture without the context of its business goals and the environment in which it
operates or interacts with, does not serve the purpose of lending itself to be the competitive
advantage of the company, nor does it become an enabler of the realization of its strategic goals and
objectives.
Culture building starts at the top. And Culture needs to be aligned with Business Strategy. The
process, therefore, of determining what Culture an organization should aim for, starts with
clarification and reflection of its purpose and business strategy. The same is achieved through a
facilitated workshop with the leadership team who are systematically led to clarify the business
strategy and translate the same to target organization culture.
Armed with both Current Actual Culture and the Target Optimal Culture we are now in a position to
do the Gap analysis and identify Change areas the organization needs to focus on. HI methodology
breaks down broad change areas to actionable change levers that are mapped on to different layers
of the Culture onion we spoke about in the 1st part of this article.
In summary as difficult as it may sound, Culture change process can be broken into more easily
understood steps and the same may be realized step by step.

(Part 1)

Organizational Culture is all pervasive in an organization. It is intricately woven into every layer of the organization. Built over a period right from its inception, it is shaped and influenced by several elements. Some of them are:

Promoter / Founder CEO and the leadership team

Purpose / Vision / values of the organization

Strategic shifts the organization has gone through at various stages of its life cycle

The nature of its business and the environment in which it operates and so on.

All the above factors program the collective mindsets of the people inside the organization and consequently ‘what and how we do things around here aka Company Culture gets formed. So, it is indeed complex.

So how does one bring about changes in such a complex entity? Before we address that let us also reflect on how does a company culture manifest itself? Enter the Culture onion.

As you see Culture is manifested through different layers of the onion. The onion needs to be peeled,and some or all of these layers need to undergo change depending on the level and nature of culture change one is seeking.

How then one go about changing layer by layer of a Company Culture?

Fortunately, we have cracked the science of Culture Change approach regardless of whether you want your culture to become more agile, more innovative, more customer centric, what have you.

Watch this space for part 2 of this blog for more on that...

In a recent survey published in Forbes undertaken by The Alternative Board, 39% of respondents concluded that Management style is the key driver for Organizational or Company Culture. Employee experience weighed in second with 30% respondents and Company reputation garnered 18%. This survey of small businesses across industries also revealed that Business owners impacted culture significantly. That brings us to the question – What are the drivers of organizational culture? We’ll start by defining organizational culture.

Organizational culture is the way in which people in an organization relate to each other, their work and the outside world, in comparison with other organizations. Your Organizational Culture shows how your organization works: how things get done, the interactions between people, and employee relationships to their work and the outside world. The best organizations often place equal emphasis on strategy and culture. Such organizations create a culture that motivates their teams. Organizational Culture is what differentiates your business, so it is important to know the various factors that contribute to your company’s culture.

Are you looking for consultation on the perfect Organizational Culture for your company?

Organic culture vs Active Culture

An organic approach means that management takes more of an observational approach to culture development so that culture develops naturally over time, or that the culture of the organization has not been considered at all. There are serious limitations and risks involved with the organic growth of your culture because it’s left to take its own direction – and this may not be aligned with your organization’s goals.

An active approach to Organizational Culture refers to organizations where the  management takes the lead in proactively defining and implementing an optimal organizational culture. This can involve leading by example, training sessions, consultant guidance and more. It’s important to remember that while Organizational Culture manifests over time on its own, taking a more active approach will help you strategically design it. With proper guidance on your part, you can shape it to benefit your employees, adapt to the current business landscape, provide better customer service and stand out from competitors. Hofstede Insights can work with you and help you actively design an optimal culture to support your business strategy, both in the short and long run.

Find out how Hofstede Insights can help you implement a more active approach to your organizational culture 

The culture of an organization is shaped by events and practices within your organisation. Knowing what influences this can help you perpetuate a strong culture that will support your business strategy and enable you to achieve excellent results:

Leadership Style: how is your company is being managed? What is the hierarchical  structure and what are the decision-making methods and the ways in which policies are enforced in your organisation?

Mission, Vision and Value: this hinges on the purpose of your business and what your products and services stand for. Your mission, vision and values mirror your intentions, and these are important factors that inspire your employees.

Work Environment: The kind of workplace you have defines how employees undertake their tasks and interact with their colleagues.

Communication: can influence employee-to-employee, employee-to-management and employee-to-clients relationships. This also depends on how people share information in your organization and whether you encourage transparency in internal communications.

Orientation: Is your business people-oriented, task-oriented or function-oriented? Knowing the priorities of your business can help you either maintain or improve the existing culture in your workplace.

Hofstede Insights can help you build an effective and sustainable organizational culture.

Top management needs to be actively involved. Management’s role is to design the optimal culture according to the organisation’s core values and needs. The activities and initiatives you implement must also clearly reflect what your business represents to ensure that your Organizational Culture is on the right track to support your company’s success. It’s also critical to identify your ideal culture and share it with appropriate stakeholders so you can guide them, and they can play an active role in its development.

Moving toward a culture that makes more sense for your organisation also lies in the hands of your employees. The people inside your organisation are paramount in transforming the overall company culture.

Employees have a key role and can make a significant contribution. By being culture advocates your team can display your company’s culture in the way they relate to other workers, how they work themselves and how they represent the business to the outside world. Culture will only translate into success if everyone in the team is aligned with each other and united with a common purpose and accountability.

Reach out to us to discuss the challenges faced by your organization and practical steps to build an optimal Organizational Culture

A recent revealed that most companies look inward for their innovation spark. The Deloitte Innovation Study 2021 surveyed business leaders from the fields of innovation, technology and business functions from a diverse set of industries, sizes and business models. The study reported that many programs kick off their process by looking internally for opportunities to optimise existing business operations. While 40% of looked internally only 15% relied on brainstorming for new ideas as their starting point. Innovation has remained a buzzword for a while now. The big question is whether your organization culture supports innovation. We’ll decode this by defining Organizational Culture.

Organizational culture is the way in which people in an organization relate to each other, their work and the outside world, in comparison with other organizations. Your Organizational Culture shows how your organization works: how things get done, the interactions between people, and employee relationships to their work and the outside world. The best organizations often place equal emphasis on strategy and culture. Such organizations create a culture that motivates their teams. Organizational Culture is what differentiates your business, so it is important to know the various factors that contribute to your company’s culture.

Are you looking for consultation on Organisational Culture?

Boston Consulting Group’s annual ranking of the world’s most innovative companies in 2021 saw Apple capture the top spot. Other companies in the top 10 also included Microsoft, Samsung, Sony and Pfizer. The survey reported that effective leaders foster an organizational culture that grants prestige to innovation roles and values openness and thoughtful challenges to the status quo. They assign their very best talent, including true business builders, to the most ambitious innovation challenges. Two themes are common to these five pivotal capabilities: exercising leadership and bringing teams together. A strategy-led, CEO-driven, data-informed innovation culture is central to putting the five pieces in place. A cross- functional, customer-centric organizational approach brings multi-capability innovation teams together to share ideas and develop insights.

It’s important to understand why you want to innovate and conduct a needs analysis. Innovation itself should never be the goal. It’s a tool or a means to an end that you can use to bring your organization closer towards your goals. For instance your goal could be meeting customer needs by improving your products or creating new ones or success in a new market. In none of these cases do you innovate for the sake of innovation. Instead, you look to innovate in order to be more successful.  This is why you need to start from a proper needs analysis. It’s equally important to be clear on what kind of innovation you need.

Chasing the wrong kind of innovation is not only ineffective but can even be counter-productive. If your goal is to improve your existing products, you would most likely do this via incremental innovation. This means gradually improving your existing products. With this kind of innovation, you are, usually, largely following the same processes you already have in place. When your goal is disruptive innovation, to create something that doesn’t exist yet, incremental innovation would be counter-productive. With disruptive innovation, you might create a product that doesn’t exist at all, or even a completely new market. That product, however, might require further development, or might be fairly expensive to produce. You wouldn’t get here by strictly following existing processes but by trying new things and accepting - even welcoming - mistakes.

position. At this stage, you should have already done your competitor analysis but understanding your position goes deeper than that. It requires you to have an honest and analytical - even critical - look into your own working practices. This all comes down to truly understanding your Organizational Culture. The best and the easiest way to understand your current reality is to compile data through an objective tool like our  Organizational Culture Scan. It gives you a snapshot of your Organizational Culture as a whole, and also allows you to divide and measure it in sub-cultures. This means that in addition to the overall culture, you can measure the cultures of different teams, departments, regional or country offices or other functions that you deem necessary. Sub-cultures allow you to get an honest starting point for your transformation project and also enable you to fine-tune where necessary. This is absolutely crucial for larger organizations.

Reach out to us to find out about how our programs and solutions can help you build the optimal Organizational Culture to meet your innovation goals.