Culture is the mirror of your organisation. When coming in an organisation for the first time you will recognise in 15 minutes what the organisational culture is. Just experience and look around, maybe ask some questions.

How are you welcomed and served at the reception desk? In what style do employees talk, especially about their colleagues and managers? How much time is spent on coffee and smoking breaks? How well motivated are the employees? Is there a lot of blaming and/or complaining? Are people laughing, smiling? These simple cultural indicators tell you so much in a short time.

My statement is that whatever your conclusion is, positive or negative, the culture is always a reflection of the management style in any company. Organisational culture is the most important binding element in an organisation. It is about the way people get along together, the goals they strive for, the way they cooperate, the values they share. It is about the language, the rituals and symbols that people use.

But a culture can also become paralysing and often management is not aware of the effect of the company culture on the results of the organisation; they are part of the process and are ‘stuck in the middle’ to speak with Kotler. Products and services are easy to copy, organisational culture is not.

Group dynamics

For some people culture is intangible and not manageable, for others it is the core and essence of the organisation. And here you find exactly the difference. Let two employees cooperate and a ‘little culture’ will develop; let a group cooperate and a ‘group culture’ will develop.

An organisation is a group of people that strive for a common goal, that is they should strive for a given common goal.

Basically every person of a group wants to feel good and deliver maximum effort to contribute to the common goals. This requires conditions within the group that need to fit and that at the same time connect to personal ambitions. If you manage to realise the good (perfect) fit, a healthy group dynamic will develop by itself which leads to synergy in your company; the group as a whole is much more productive than the sum of the different parts.

Maybe this sounds very logically, but why does it usually not work that way?

Compliments

To start with, it would be good that a manager is better aware of the impact of the organisational culture and its effects. What is it that my employees bind? What are our common goals? What can I, as a manager, do to create the missing, binding elements?

Important is that management is aware that an organisation is an organic entity, a community of people. Buildings, offices, machines, etc. are just tools to help the employees to fulfil its tasks. Nothing more and nothing less.

You can read in every management book about the importance of recognition and acknowledgement of the performance of your people; individual as well as a group. It is said so often, a compliment has a much longer lasting impact than that 50 euro bonus at the end of the month.

But, how often do you as a manager give that compliment to your employee(s)? How often do you say to your group that ‘we’ did it all together perfectly again? If management has no eye for and shows no interest in the performance of their staff, individual and group, staff will show no eye and have no interest for the desired performance of the company. That’s the other side of the mirror!

Signals

Sometimes managers are not aware of the missing cultural elements that block company success. You experience dissatisfaction but cannot pinpoint to the cause. More often it happens that managers blame their staff for the cause of the failing organisation and accuse them of a lack of commitment and responsibility, which leads to the negative spiral downward. Commitment and involvement really goes down, cooperation decreases, employees feel not taken seriously and people become passive.

Important signals of a failing organisational culture are a.o. structural sick leave, the way employees talk about your company, both internally and in private situations, the willingness to help a colleague, etc.

For a manager it is good to then take distance and think about cause and effect with a helicopter view. Apathy and indifference can have many causes. Sooner management realises what the real causes are, sooner management can adjust.

The core of organisational culture

To get the maximum out of your people you need a favourable, encouraging company culture. A culture in which your people know where the organisation is heading, why certain decisions are taken, what is expected of them.

The core of a successful organisational culture is openness and honesty. Internal communication and behaviour of management plays the most important, crucial role. Highly educated people want to know why decisions are made, they want to be partner in business and want to know all about the goals and directions of the organisation and what is expected of them. They want to be able to identify with the norms and values of the company you are leading.

Management sets the vision and the guidelines; they set the goals, standards and the values that give direction to the company that employees have to follow up. The behaviour of management will be copied and in this way the culture of an organisation will be set. Top quality managers have top quality employees in a top quality organisation.

What can I do as a (top)manager?

Think about your own role as a (top)manager. How can I develop myself in a more effective, stimulating, authentic, transformational way in my company? How can I make my company ready for the changes in the market? Where are the opportunities for my company? What should I do to use that opportunities and possibilities? How can I involve and commit my staff to the goals of my company? How can I motivate my staff to come up with creative ideas and suggestions? How can I create the team spirit and the productivity boost that my company needs?

How can I make my company a better place to work in and in that way be more profitable?

How could Balance Consultancy help you?

We can provide you a tailor-made solution for your training needs to make your employees and your company more successful.
www.balance-consultancy.com