Getting On Top Of Organisational Culture

Organisational culture comes in various flavours. Some are distinct and easy to understand. For example, your company could have an entrepreneurial culture or one of collaboration; your culture could be caring or competing; it could be bureaucratic, clannish, adaptive, result-oriented, rules-driven, learning-focused, safety-concerned, customer-oriented, or a combination of one or more. 

It has also become common to hear CEOs and HR teams claim, "We have a culture of innovation." How did they conclude this? What did they do to create a culture of innovation? Can they change it overnight to a culture of caution if required? 

Even more important, can your organisation use technology, in addition to the standard tools such as pulse checks, cultural scorecards, one-on-one meetings, and focus group feedback, to measure cultural nuances? Doing this will remove all ambiguity in your organisation's cultural profile. 

First, it is essential to answer the question, "Can your organisation change its culture and behaviour overnight?" One Gartner study shows that the pandemic is forcing a reset of organisational cultures. 

The study says that 68 per cent of executive teams are re-evaluating their company's culture in light of the virtual and hybrid work environment. This makes sense. I am surprised that only 68 per cent think their company culture needs review and transformation.

Organisational culture is shaped and defined by changes in the social and business environment. In the short span of 24 months, the pandemic has injected unprecedented change in social and business behavior. Like it or not, your organisational culture is primed for change. 

Every business leader should urgently take cognizance of the need to adjust organisational culture. The adjustment is necessary because we know (or at least believe) that culture can be a competitive advantage. 

It is also one of the prime influencers of business performance and is central to attracting talent and investors. Gartner's analysis of earnings calls since 2010 shows that culture mentions have increased by 12 per cent annually, making culture one of "the most discussed talent issues."

Hard as it is for business leaders to admit it, the bottom line on organisational culture is this: Few can confidently claim that the authentic culture of their organisation reflects the desired culture. Even when they are confident, they can rarely say that their claimed culture is spread evenly across the firm. 

It is evident for everyone to see that in practically every organisation, the culture of the procurement office differs from that of the human resources office, which differs from that of the delivery team. If you run a technology business, a utility, or a services organisation, you also know the off-site teams have their own culture. 

This trait gets amplified and becomes noticeable when off-site employees visit the head office. No business can stay in denial of these facts. There is worse. The most recent Microsoft Work Trends Index says that 62 per cent of frontline workers say leadership does not prioritize building culture. 

Organisational culture is crucial because it sets behaviour patterns that make teamwork smooth. It guides decision-making. Employees can be confident that their decisions align with corporate expectations. It makes customers comfortable and, doubtless, is a talent magnet. 

Given the importance of culture in a business, is it time for the organisation's chief culture officer to consider technology as a tool to measure culture?  

Significant indicators of an organisation's culture lie buried in enterprise data. Is the number of employees taking self-learning courses offered by the company's learning and development system going up? If employees are not mandated to upskill choose certifications, we can be reasonably sure of a learning culture. 

Can emails and internal messaging platforms be scanned (anonymously, by department or executive levels) to gauge sentiment? Keyword analysis may reveal if the organisation has a culture of thankfulness and gratitude or if it is customer-oriented or bureaucratic. Do employees cc their email to several colleagues? On the surface, this may point to a culture of transparency but actually reveals a culture of distrust. 

Researchers have found that in an organisation where cc-ing others on email were the norm, distrust was higher (than in an organisation where it is occasional). The average time taken to respond to emails from customers may reveal an organisation's responsiveness. Identifying the ratio of patents to the number of employees may reveal the innovative nature of an organisation (but not the propensity for jugad!). Tracking and analysing the number of employees who join online meetings late can tell us the organisation's level of respect for other people's time (and it is undoubtedly not rules-driven). These inferences also become cues for targeted corrective action.  

There can be several innovative ways to use enterprise data to get to the bottom of culture and leverage it effectively. For example, if a team shows signs of being innovative, that is the team that should be allowed to undertake new and risky projects. If a team shows signs of being prompt and mindful of time, the team should be encouraged to undertake delivery.  

If the leadership of an organisation is in touch with employees at the grassroots level, it already knows how to leverage employee traits. But this is impossible in a large organisation. Here, technology can come to the rescue. 

Some cultural metrics can be measured more frequently – and in almost real-time—using technology. These can be used as broad indicators of shifts in culture that often go unnoticed until it becomes a headache to take corrective action. 

By no means is this an argument for technology to replace traditional culture measurement and management methods. Instead, it is a way of exploring the use of technology to further the goals of an organisation with greater confidence. We may differ on how we use technology for culture management, but all of us will agree that technology should be leveraged.   

---