Organizational Culture – Help or Hindrance?

There are a number of inter-related performance  Improve your organisation culture factors in a company’s operating style/culture (the way things are done) that can significantly influence its organisational effectiveness. Poor execution caused by organisational issues is held responsible for over 50% of corporate failures to fully deliver business strategy. Moreover, at least 60% of company mergers fail to realise their anticipated pre-acquisition values, and approximately 75% of all change programmes are unsuccessful. Why? Because organisational culture can secretly conspire against these efforts.

Cultural clashes mean that what looks on paper to be a sensible restructuring solution often doesn’t work in reality unless potential incompatibilities of organisations and units during merger integration are addressed. Discovering cultural differences too late can prove costly, time consuming and hugely frustrating. Improve your organisation culture

What is organisational culture?

Many books, filling plenty of library shelving, give us all sorts of statements and descriptions characterising organisational culture. Organisational psychologists talk of the values, assumptions, behavioural patterns, style, climate, atmosphere, norms, and observable attributes that we associate with a particular organisation or group. Put more simply, it’s “the way things are done around here.”

Employees soon learn the ropes about the organisation’s culture by experiencing how people behave towards one another and about the ‘rules of the game’ through what is paid attention to. These behavioural norms may or may not be aligned with the company’s stated values or conducive to the achievement of its stated strategy.

Examples abound. The CEO who is adamant about the need for entrepreneurial creativity and innovation as a strategic imperative, and whose senior manager’s immediate response to any volunteered creative idea is: “It won’t work.”