The Winning Culture

The Winning Culture

The purpose of this blog is to examine organizational cultures and determine which is the best for the organization.  There are four cultures, Autocratic, Bureaucratic, Collaborative, and Decentralized. Nothing is 100%.  No one organization is all of one type the same as an individual is not all the same personality style. But, that being said, most smaller entrepreneurial cultures are autocratic, governments and large regulated organizations tend to be bureaucratic, modern organizations that work hard to work in teams tend to be collaborative, and many smaller professional firms are individual.  When we correlate with success we see that overall the collaborative culture tends to be the most successful. That is, with success being defined as meeting its objectives in a productive fashion.  They serve the customer better and they do it more efficiently.  

Politics or Culture?

As I watch what’s happening in the political world, I try and look behind the headlines.  I see that people are totally unhappy with the current political situation, but I think they are actually feeling something deeper.  I think they are seeing that the present situation doesn’t work. 

The real fact is, that often government doesn’t work nearly as well as some of our private institutions.  But, it’s not that they are governments.  It’s that they are bureaucratic cultures.  It’s actually the culture that isn’t working, not the fact that it is government.

When we see such companies as Apple Computer and Southwest Airlines buck the trends of the economy and their industries, we have to ask why?  Then, when we see what is happening in Washington or Phoenix, we have to ask why again?  The government isn’t a failure, but the bureaucratic culture leaves a lot to be desired.

I challenge people to look at what works in society, and then what doesn’t work.  Then, look at the cultures and see if there is a correlation.

Please post your findings in the comments.  Thanks.

A result of rules

I was thinking about this scenario the other day, and it really tells the culture of the organization.  By the way, the case is strictly fictional, but I’m sure it could happen.

 Let’s say we have a fast-food restaurant chain.  The policy of the organization is that every employee is to get a 15-minute break during each shift.  One manager, let’s call him Bob, was so interested in productivity that he often forget to give his people their break.  Consequently, some employees complained, and he got in trouble.

 So, what did the company do?  They made a rule that each manager should set a specific schedule for each employee, and make sure that they took their breaks at the required time.  In other words, because of the problem with Bob, they decided that they couldn’t trust their managers in this particular area.

 One day, Pam was just about ready to go on break at her scheduled time when she saw a bus drive into the parking lot.  But, abiding by the rules, she shut down her cash register and went on break. 

 Anyone want to guess how the customer service might have been for that bus group?

 

 

What's in a birthday card

Winning cultures manage their mailing lists and other things to please the customer.  Other kinds of companies use theirs only to sell.  Yesterday I received a personal birthday card from Southwest Airlines.  They obviously knew my birthday from their database, but then, so do a lot of other companies.  With the exception of only one other organization that is very small and personal, this is the only similar card I received.  Do we think it has something to do with their culture?  You bet.  Collaborative cultures concentrate on their customers and it pays.  

The Scarcity Model

Following a recent enjoyable lunch with a friend I started to more clearly understand why many bureaucratic organizations have so many problems.  They generally subscribe to the “scarcity model,” and don’t handle the management of it well.

 The general idea of this model is that there is a limited size of the whole pie, and therefore, it’s in the best interest of each department to get the largest piece of the pie as possible.  Thus, department heads spend large amounts of time in political maneuvering to obtain as much pie as possible.

 The department’s employees and other stakeholders quickly jump on the bandwagon.  They also see that their fate is tied to getting more of the pie, so they join in the maneuvering.  This results in such behavior as “sandbagging” budgets and similar budgetary games.  Another similar behavior occurs when the department’s budget is cut.  The department head often will cut the most publically visible service so that the public will scream and the budget will be reinstated.  That is often why parks are closed, trash is allowed to rot on the street, or classrooms are filled to overcapacity.

 The solution is relatively simple.  The organization must start with mutually agreed upon mission, vision, and values.  The governing board of the organization must agree on these.  Then, each member of the senior management team must agree on a set of mission, vision, and values statements that will work for the whole organization.  From there, each department has its own set of mutually agreed upon mission, vision, and values statements. 

 Just having the statements in place won’t completely solve the problem.  In the collaborative culture, department heads are the connectors between the departments they run and the departments of which they are a part.  For example, the chief financial officer is probably a member of the senior management team and also the head of the financial team.  The senior marketing officer is also on the senior management team and the head of the marketing team.

 One of the most important values of the teams has to be that, when forced to make a tough decision, the team leader must realize that his or her loyalty to the team of which the person is a member must be greater than the loyalty to the team or department the person heads.  The CFO must go with the decision of the senior management team even when the decision may adversely affect the financial team.  Likewise, the senior marketing officer must go along with the decision of the senior management team even when it will hurt the marketing team.

 That does not mean that the department head will, throw the team under the bus.  The department head will argue with passion for the department, but when consensus is reached, he or she must go with what is best for the organization.

 Scarcity does exist in all organizations.  We can’t get around that.  But, with this type of thinking, the organization gets through the scarcity in the manner that best serves the goals of the total organization and not just that of the department.

   

Arrogance and Success

I observed two events over the past 24 hours that appear to be completely unrelated, but are in fact, two totally similar events.  The two items are the upset victory of Brown in Mass., and the apparent firing or resigning of Linda Colt, customer service person at Lowrance Electronics.  The similarity is arrogance.

 Last year President Obama ran, and won, on the concept that Washington was not listening and taking the arrogant attitude that they were smarter than the people.  Then he put into practice many policies with which the people didn’t totally agree.  The people spoke through the “tea party” movement and in other ways, but Washington gave off the feeling that they were not listening.  The people interpreted this as arrogance, and they elected the first person they could find who presented the case that he was listening.

 In the case of Lowrance, they had a terrific customer service person who would take care of customers quickly.  Most importantly, she was available via phone or e-mail.  I talked with her a couple of times, and the service was great.  On the other hand, I have heard of others who went through the more traditional customer service system, and did not receive good service.

 Linda’s reputation for good service grew on the bass-fishing discussion boards.  Then when she resigned under pressure (a family member’s side of the story) the story took on a life of its own.  Hundreds of customers sent messages to Lowrance management expressing their disappointment for her leaving.  The company quickly sent out another release and have indicated that they are discussing reconciliation.

 The moral is to listen to the customer, (voter).  When we don’t listen to employees, customers, constituents, and stake holders we appear to be arrogant.  We may not feel arrogant.  We may not mean to be arrogant, but that’s how the public receives it.  We need to make every effort to listen.  We need to be on the discussion boards hearing what our customers are saying.  And, we need to be talking to them and giving them our side of the story while being sure to listen to them.

How do you measure success?

This is probably one of the most important things we consider in an organization.  

Following is an excerpt from a recent article appearing in the Durango Herald.  

http://durangoherald.com/sections/News/2009/11/14/Westberg_resigns_her_health_post/

“In off-the-cuff remarks after she turned in her goodbye letter, Westberg said she was proud of her accomplishments.  In recapping the last 20 years, she recalled that in 1989 the department had 28 employees, 31 programs and an annual budget of less than $600,000. This year, the department has 91 regular employees, operates 70 programs and has a budget of $6 million.”

Obviously, this person is measuring success as the size of budget and the number of employees.  This is often the case with the bureaucratic culture since that is often how a person is judged.  

I would suggest that there is a better way.  That is to measure success on the basis of the organization’s success in meeting its goals and objectives.  In other words, is the organization realizing its mission?  If this were the criteria, the person might be measuring success of the county health department by a simple question, “is the county more healthy today than when I took over?”  

In the same way, school systems should be asking the question, “are our children being educated better?”  Our military should be asking, “are we safer today?”  Our corporations should be asking, “are we serving our customers better?”  In short, every organization should look back at its mission statement and ask the simple question, “are we accomplishing our mission?”  

Using this measure of success is far more difficult. One cannot prove a cause and effect relationship.  There are many reasons why a county might be more or less healthy.  There are many reasons why children are better or worse educated, or a nation more or less safe.  Because it is impossible to prove the cause and effect relationship, the bureaucratic culture often moves to  measure an input, (budget or employees), rather than the output, (health or education). 

 Unfortunately, it is a vastly inferior way to measure success.

Watch who we hire

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,572605,00.html

This story is certainly a perfect example of the need to to extensive interviewing to make sure that we hire for people skills in addition to technical skills.  Both are certainly important, but it's the people skills that are difficult to understand and measure.  Bureaucratic organizations primarily hire on technical skills.  Collaborative culture organizations will set a proper "bar" for technical skills.  But then they will interview for and hire for people skills to make sure that they have good team players as part of the team.  I have no idea of the culture of the Orlando company, but even without that knowledge, it's good to remember this important aspect of the collaborative culture.

Vision statement

durangoherald.com/sections/News/2009/11/04/Residents_asked_to_rate_countys_vision_statement/

Check out the above story.  LaPlata County, AZ is working on a vision statement.  At this point it is 9 pages long!  This is totally true of the bureaucratic culture.  

Or successful organizations have to develop a vision statement that is less than 9 lines long, not 9 pages.  The key is agreement.  The process is not easy, but it absolutely needs to be done. 

           

Titles are everything

People often question the importance of semantics.  Yes, words mean a lot.  Think of the titles in organizations.  When you hear that people have titles like manager, supervisor, and similar titles it usually means that the organization believes in management.  This is the old style organization.  After all, who likes to be managed or supervised?  The new style organization; however, uses titles like team leader and associate.  These titles indicate leadership and equality rather than hierarchy and bureaucracy.  Watch the titles in your organization.  They say everything.  

Cultures and rules

One of the most important things about organizational cultures is the extent to which they rely on rules and regulations.  Obviously, every organization needs to have some rules.  But trust is something that differentiates cultures.  Let's compare the two.  Trust and and rules run counter to each other.  That is, an organization imposes a rule to attempt to make something happen or prevent something from happening.  Rules primarily affect people.  Therefore, we impose rules because we don't trust that people will make the right decisions.

For example, in an organization we trust that people will act nicely to each other because they care about each other.  Consequently, we don't necessarily place rules about what we can say and what we can't.  If we don't have that trust, or too many people violate the "unwritten" rule, then we impose the written rule.  What is often called "political correctness," is the result of a lot of rules being passed because people don't trust that others will talk without offending.    

The problem is that rules all have unintended consequences.  The collaborative culture tends not to have as many rules.  The bureaucratic culture has more rules.  They both have some rules.  The distinguishing factor about the cultures is where is the primary trust. In the collaborative culture, the person is trusted more, and consequently, there are fewer rules.  In the bureaucratic culture the rules and regulations tend to be trusted more.

The recent news article about the Eagle Scout who was suspended from school for 20 days for having a small pocket knife locked in the mess kit in his locked car is a great example.  The school system had a "no tolerance" policy about weapons on the school ground.  Consequently, they were forced to carry out the policy regardless of what might have been "right" under the circumstances.  The amount of negative publicity they received about this incident points out some of the negative consequences about the decision.

The primary thing is that the school board must ask themselves.  Does the "no tolerance" policy really create a more safe school system, or was the rule placed there to protect the school system either from lawsuits or criticism from people.  That is a question only the board can answer.

When passing a rule for our organization, we must ask questions about the cost of enforcing the rule, the unintended consequences of the rule, why the rule is being proposed, and if will really accomplish its intended purpose.