Managing Organisational Culture

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Managing Organisational Culture

• Dr. John Whiteoak
• University of the Sunshine Coast
• whiteoak_at_usc.edu.au

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Culture SoftBUTSoft Hard
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• PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE Organisational Cultures

SOURCE Neilson et al. Harvard Business Review.
2005.
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Passive-Aggressive Cultures

• 3 out of 10 people in the US report having a
  passive-aggressive cultures
• Feigning sweetness between subordinates and
  supervisors
• Robotic submission to leadership
• Put in only enough effort to appear compliant
• Lack of dissenting opinion making waves is the
  ultimate sin.
• Blaming outside sources for poor performance.
• A vicious highly effective grapevine
• Bosses use intimidation
• Very few consequences for bad behaviour
• Environment is secretive ripe for scandals,
  sexual harassment, and financial misdeeds.

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• What is our strategy?
• Or more importantly
• Why is our strategy?

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Why Do Organisations Vision?
Brings people together around a common
dream Co-ordinates the work of different
people Helps everyone make decisions Builds a
foundation for business planning Challenges the
comfortable or inadequate present state Makes
incongruent behaviour more noticeable
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A POWERFUL VISION STATEMENT

• Presents where we want to go.
• Easy to read and understand.
• Captures the desired spirit of the
  organisation.
• Dynamically incomplete so people can fill in
  the pieces.
• Provides a motivating force, even in hard
  times.
• Is perceived as achievable.
• Is challenging and compelling,
  stretching beyond what is comfortable.

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A mission statement answers the basic question.
So What Are You On About?
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ELEPHANT HUNTING

• The Issues, Challenges, KRAs (The Big Stuff)
• Environmental Scans Conduct Research
• Doing a SWOT is not strategy
• No more than 6
• About 3 strategies per issue
• Measures and accountability developed for each
  strategy

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The Big Three JustasThe strategy is
right. Its just a communications
problem.The plan is dead onits just an
implementation problem. Look, weve got the
strategy rightwe just need to fix the people
bit.
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• Successfully executing strategy depends to a
  great extent on how well the organisation is
  aligned with the strategy
• (Darryl Krook, MD, CPEM Consulting)

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Execution is strategy. Fred Malek fffffii
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Vision statements count for little if more than
half the employeesdo not share the company values
SEEK Employee Satisfaction Motivation Survey
2004
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Stanford Research on Values

• More effective companies have three qualities
  in common around their values
  Consensus Clarity Intensity

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Typical Organisational Values

• Career Resilience
• Employment at Will
• Select people for skills not attitudes and fit
• Buy rather than make talent
• Lean staffing
• Periodic downsizing
• Money is the primary motivator
• Individual incentives
• Pay-for-performance
• Share holder value 1st and last

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Assumptions about people

• Effort averse
• Management and employee interests are not aligned
• People are opportunistic (self-interest
  seeking, will take advantage)
• Mangers need to design incentive systems to
  overcome these differences
• High powered incentives (money) are better than
  low-powered
• People work for money and will comply with
  management to get it

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Management Hot Air

• All organisations routinely say that people are
  our greatest asset. Yet few practice what they
  preach, let alone truly believe it
  organisations have to market membership as much
  as they market products and services and
  perhaps more.
• (Peter Drucker, 1992)

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Culture is about Getting Good People?

• The war for talent (The Mckinsey Quarterly, 1998)
• Get great results with ordinary people (Hidden
  Value, OReilly Pfeffer,1996)

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In short, hiring is the most important aspect
of business and yet remains woefully
misunderstood. Source Wall Street Journal,
10.29.08, review of Who The A Method for
Hiring, Geoff Smart and Randy Street
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1 cause ofDis-satisfaction?
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Employee retention satisfaction
Overwhelmingly, based on the first-line
manager!Source Marcus Buckingham Curt
Coffman, First, Break All the Rules What the
Worlds Greatest Managers Do Differently
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You have to treat your employees like
customers. Herb Kelleher, complete answer, upon
being asked his secrets to success Source
Joe Nocera, NYT, Parting Words of an Airline
Pioneer, on the occasion of Herb Kellehers
retirement after 37 years at Southwest Airlines
(SWAs pilots union took out a full-page ad in
USA Today thanking HK for all he had done across
the way in Dallas American Airlines pilots were
picketing the Annual Meeting)
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Press Ganey Assoc 139,380 former patients from
225 hospitalsnone of THE top 15 factors
determining Patient Satisfaction referred to
patients health outcomeP.S. directly related
to Staff InteractionP.S. directly correlated
with Employee Satisfaction Source Putting
Patients First, Susan Frampton, Laura Gilpin,
Patrick Charmel
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Natural selection is death. ... Without huge
amounts of death, organisms do not change over
time. ... Death is the mother of structure. ...
It took four billion years of death ... to invent
the human mind ... The Cobra Event
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The greatest dangerfor most of usis not that
our aim istoo highand we miss it,but that it
istoo lowand we reach it.Michelangelo
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Mediocrity is a Disease
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No obvious Crisis
Great resources
Management happy talk
General low standards
Complacency
Denial of bad news
Focus on narrow functional goals
Low confrontation culture
Internal measures have inappropriate performance
indices
Inadequate external reporting feedback
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Management Support

• True Believer highly committed to the values
  and persistent
• Believer supports values but other priorities
  dominate
• Skeptic doubts about values being effective
• Detractor open, visible troublemaker, undermines
  values

Source Adapted from McDonald, G. (1989).
Manager attitudes to training. Asia Pacific HRM,
27(4).
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Managers 10 point checklist self assessment
In the past month I have.

• .Used stories to reinforce the organisations
  values
• .Verbally acknowledged individuals efforts and
  achievements
• .Written a note to someone to acknowledge
  special effort and achievements
• .Had a discussion with one of my direct reports
  in relation to their role, personal development
  and career aspirations
• .Provided constructive feedback to one of my
  direct reports on how they could improve the way
  they are doing things
• .Invested some one-on-one time with one of my
  direct reports to chew the fat
• .Invested some face time with employees at lower
  levels in the organisation
• .Invested some time in tapping the pulse
  listening to peoples issues and concerns
• .Had a conversation concerning poor performance
  and how to deal with it effectively
• .Prompted people to collaborate and share
  information and experience with people in other
  parts of the organisation