ТОW#448 — Organisational culture
Organisational culture is one of those aspects of company management that is not easy to define, and yet it can seriously affect the stability and success of companies. In fact, one of the most common reasons why organisations faced with crises go bust is the lack of a clearly established organisational culture, i.e. a joint set of values and norms for all employees that correspond to the company’s work as a whole.
Nevertheless, organisational culture does not refer to the idea that all employees should have the same stance and think the same, but to the way in which all employees (including management) “do things” — how they communicate among themselves and with co-workers, how they go about everyday tasks and, in doing so, how they create a certain kind of recognisability of their company in relation to the rest. If a company’s structure and team members are the body and mind that are meant to move the company forward, then the culture is the company’s spirit.
The benefits of a strong organisational culture are numerous and relate to open and transparent communication between employees, the creation of mutual respect and trust, and motivated employees who want to follow the company’s vision and mission. All of that leads to a desire to achieve shared targets, reduces employee turnover and produces other positive outcomes.
Here are a few suggestions that might help you to create a strong organisational culture in your company:
• Get to know your employees’ needs — your employees are the engine that’s supposed to move the company forward, but how well do you really know them? What motivates them? What kinds of problems do they face at work? Have you tried talking to them in order to overcome those problems? If you don’t know your employees well, it’s highly likely that they’ll lose their passion for their work when confronted with a more serious problem.
• Create a respectful and trusting work environment — there’s a lot of truth in the old saying “behave towards others as you would like them to behave towards you”. When creating a dynamic organisational culture, the fact that there’ll be different opinions and values from yours does not necessarily mean that they are wrong. Simply try to trust in your team and accept and respect viewpoints that differ from your own.
• Never forget the ‘real’ reason why the company exists — every company should have a clear vision, mission and goals it wants to achieve, but very often the ‘real’ reason for a company’s existence and why it’s significant is not communicated clearly enough to its employees.
• Clearly define your company’s key values — the organisational culture should not be founded upon a hierarchical system, but on values that everyone in the company, including management, lives by. If there are no norms, rules, clearly defined roles, open communication and other things to support the key values, the company may very easily turn into a fragile structure that will find it hard to overcome crisis situations.
• Be an example for your employees — employees always look to their managers in important situations (e.g. how responsible they are in the completion of tasks, how they take decisions, how much they are respected by others and so on), and they’ll quickly begin to directly reflect and adopt this ‘approved’ behaviour.
Creating a stable organisational culture is not an easy thing to do, but it’s very important and powerful for ‘shaping’ the behaviour of others. As a company grows and its teams become more diverse, leading it towards continued success becomes an increasingly difficult challenge.
Wishing you success with the changes to come,
Zhaklina Gerasimovska
“Tip of the Week” Team member
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