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Company’s Culture?
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What’s Your
Company’s Culture?
Behavior that produces great results in one organization
could be disastrous at another
Warren was stumped. After three
months as communications director in
a new company, he was sure he’d put all
the right structures in place. He had
tightened up the department’s media
lists, clarified which staff writers were
responsible for what areas, and sent a
memo to all department heads exhort-
ing them to inform him of potential
news. Yet his department was stuck in
low gear. Despite their story quotas, the
staff writers continued to produce
mediocre material in small quantities,
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and several recent news-making oppor-
tunities had been squandered because
no one had alerted Warren. Why, he
wondered, were all the methods that
worked at his last company failing him
now?
He didn’t know it, but he was using the
wrong methods for his new environ-
ment. Rules, policies, and chain of
command were the operative dynamic
at his former place of employment. But
at the new company it was all about
relationships. Only when Warren began
to get to know both his staff members
and department heads did he get the
leads and results he wanted.
The example illustrates the importance
of understanding and mastering work-
place culture in an age when the rules,
and indeed the game, are changing.
“One CEO told me he thought he’d
covered all his bases,” says Terrence E.
Deal, a professor at the University of
Southern California (Los Angeles) and
a workplace culture expert. “Then he
found out everyone else was playing
football.”
Many workplace problems can be
blamed on the failure of most managers
Copyright © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.
to transcend a narrow, one-dimensional
approach to leading their teams,
according to Deal and Lee G. Bolman,
professor at the Henry W. Bloch School
of Business and Public Administration
at the University of Missouri–Kansas
City. The two have written a book,
Reframing Organizations: Artistry,
Choice, and Leadership, in which they
take a fresh look at the different kinds
of workplace culture.
Bolman and Deal describe four types of
operating models or “frames,” each
with an accompanying metaphor—the
structural model (factory), the human
resource model (family), the political
model (jungle), and the symbolic model
(temple). Companies are dynamic orga-
nizations, the authors point out; all four
frames can manifest in varying degrees
over time in any given workplace.
Effective managers discern what logic
governs their organizations and choose
strategies accordingly.
Here, in more detail, are the four
frames Bolman and Deal describe and
strategies for navigating the cultural
waters.
Structural:The factory
Like a factory, an office functioning on
the structural level relies upon a hierar-
chy and rules. Taken to an extreme, the
structural approach can be cold,
bureaucratic, and stifling. But when
employed thoughtfully, Deal and Bol-
man contend, this frame can benefit
staff members, who appreciate working
in a clear and universally understood
system. “Structural” need not mean
rigid, they stress—leaders can design a
workplace architecture that encourages
creativity. “The assumption of the
structural frame,” they write, “reflects a
belief in rationality and a faith that the
right formal arrangements minimize
problems and increase quality and per-
formance.”
The following blunder illustrates how
not to operate effectively in a structural
environment. Department manager
Michelle has just added two to her staff
thanks to a change in the organizational
scheme. John and Elaine now report to
her, and they’re making it known how
little it pleases them. John, who has
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good relationships with several key
customers, is responding to his new
boss’s requests slowly or not at all,
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which infuriates Michelle. In response,
she plays the crudest of the structural
cards—her higher standing on the food
chain. Calling John in for a closed-door
meeting, she snarls: “I don’t care
whether you like reporting to me or not.
Accept it or find a new job.” John opts
for the latter, and the company ends up
losing two of the customers with whom
John worked.
If she had the chance to do it again,
Michelle might have played her hand
more deftly. Instead of invoking raw
status, she could begin by arranging
meetings with her two new reports to
learn their goals for the fiscal year and
progress toward fulfilling them—also
the stuff of which a structural work-
place is made. As a next step, she could
help them develop a strategy for the
next year and determine the resources
necessary to bring the plans to fruition.
Such an approach could lead Elaine
and John to regard the reporting change
as an improvement rather than an impo-
sition.
At its worst, a structural workplace
can become polluted by the ego and
vanity of the boss, says Lon Shealy, a
former CEO and now an Oklahoma
City–based consultant. “The most
common characteristic of unhealthy
cultures is that they’re hierarchical and
autocratic in nature, temperament, and
practice. The chief thinks he can do no
wrong. It’s not responsive, not partici-
pative, not collaborative.”
3
 Culture, continued
Human Resource:The family
Whereas the structural model asserts
that humans work to serve the organi-
zation, the human resource frame turns
“Politics is really the art of making good deals.…There’s
a good place between naïveté and Mugger Alley.”
it around: Organizations exist to serve
human needs. Relationships are at the
center of this construct—the relation-
ship between people in the organiza-
tion, and their relationship to the orga-
nization itself.
“In the human resource frame, the issue
is human needs and how well we’re
meeting them,” Deal says. “It’s about
listening and trying to figure out what
really motivates people, and inquiring
into how they’re feeling about things. A
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rationalist says ‘screw feelings, get the
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job done.’The HR-oriented person tries
to understand where people are coming
from.” When the fit between people and
organization is poor, the authors say,
individuals put less into their jobs and
even work deliberately to thwart orga-
nizational purposes. When the individ-
ual and the organization are in sync, on
the other hand, people give their maxi-
mum talent and energy, and the organi-
zation thrives.
Warren, the communications director
described earlier, finds himself tempted
to go overboard when he applies the
human resources frame to his moribund
operation. He wants to make everyone
happy, all the time, to the point where
some staff members begin taking
advantage of him. He discovers that his
desire to meet his staff’s needs cannot
be satisfied in all cases—for example,
when a talented young staff writer
insists on pursuing a story that could
alienate a bloc of customers. Meeting
needs, the director realizes, is a two-
way street; the organization cannot
possibly succeed if it is satisfying
desires that are counter to the com-
pany’s interests.
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“When people are overcommitted to
the human resources model, they can
get stuck trying to be nice and demo-
cratic in all situations,” Bolman says.
“A key to employing this effectively is
to listen and advocate at the same time.
There are some people who are very
reluctant to advocate, to take a firm
position, and to say what they think
when it might be unpalatable to others.”
Political:The jungle
To many people, “political” connotes
an obsession with winning and losing.
Deal and Bolman believe the political
frame is not only a reality but often the
most desirable approach. “There’s
nothing wrong with being ‘political,’”
Deal says. “In fact, we say it’s
absolutely essential. The fact that poli-
tics has such a bad name hurts organi-
zations because, rather than resolving
issues out in the open, they fight behind
the scenes. People get mad and then
they try to get even. Politics is really the
art of making good deals. We believe
there’s a good place between naïveté
and Mugger Alley.”
Conflict is inevitable; the question is
how to achieve resolutions all parties
can live with. Power is the currency of
the political frame. “Sophisticated
political leaders,” Deal and Bolman
write, “prefer to avoid head-on demon-
strations of power, looking for ways to
appeal to the self-interests of potential
adversaries.”
For example, the heads of two different
product groups want to add a data-man-
agement specialist in the upcoming fis-
cal year, but the CFO has made it clear
that the company can afford to hire only
one. Tom, the director of the first group,
is taken over by his competitive nature
and declares war on Janet, the head of
the second group. In a meeting with the
VP, he presses his case by running
down his counterpart’s ability to use the
specialist effectively and by invoking
the authority of his long tenure with the
company. When the VP does not give
him the assurance he wants, Tom
threatens to take his case to the presi-
dent. The VP, who has the president’s
full confidence, can only scoff at the
empty threat. Motivated in part by his
irritation and growing doubts about
Tom’s ability to manage effectively, the
VP decides that Janet’s group will get
the new staff member.
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A more politically astute Tom would
check his tendency to make every issue
a test of his manhood. Aware of the
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senior staff’s admiration for Janet and
her department’s recent performance,
he realizes a power play can only fail
him. Instead, he approaches Janet
about an arrangement to share the data-
management position, which she
agrees to champion with him. Ulti-
mately, the vice president rejects the
arrangement, and the staff position
goes to Janet’s unit. But Tom hardly
“loses.” He is promised strong consid-
eration for a data guru of his own in the
following fiscal year, and he is given a
budget to hire a consultant to help him
through this year’s crunch.
Symbolic:The temple
Since 1964, two employees of the
Seibu real estate and transportation
company have kept an overnight vigil
at the tomb of their company’s patri-
arch, Yasujiro Tsutsumi. On New
Year’s Eve, the group swells to 500 or
more, lined up by rank and seniority,
for a stern speech by the current com-
pany head. This ritual, which Bolman
and Deal recount in their book, makes
little sense from a structural, human
resource, or political standpoint. The
Seibu people are operating in the sym-
bolic frame, in which organizations
honor the beliefs, values, practices, and
legacies that define their cultures.
Deal and Bolman believe that the sym-
bolic is too seldom recognized in
 Culture, continued
today’s workplace. Symbols, they note,
can be particularly important in an age
of mergers and acquisitions. Change is
often demoralizing; leaders need to
find ways to allow employees to mourn
and celebrate what they’re leaving
behind and form a kinship with the new
organization. Many companies have
used videos and skits to inspire a sense
of their organization’s special character
and a bond among its people.
As with the other types of environ-
ments, executives need to take care not
to accidentally send the wrong signal.
For example, the VP of human
resources at a private university gave t-
shirts to all staff members to thank
them at the annual recognition lunch-
eon. But many of the employees,
already miffed about their perceived
second-class status relative to the fac-
ulty, rolled their eyes upon discovering
the shirts were all extra large. When
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one petite woman suggested that
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smaller sizes should also be offered, the
VP made a sarcastic remark about her
H A R VA R D M A N A G E M E N T C O M M U N I C AT I O N L E T T E R D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 0
lack of gratitude. Instead of communi-
cating his appreciation, the VP had
inadvertently reinforced the perception
that the employees didn’t matter.
“It’s about communicating not by
memos or speeches but through the
things you do on a daily basis,” says
Chris Turner, a Cambridge, Mass.–
based consultant and author of All Hat
and No Cattle: Tales of a Corporate
Outlaw.
Despite the positive connotations of
some of their metaphors and the nega-
tive connotations of others, Deal and
Bolman are quick to point out that none
of the four models is inherently better
than another. Each has its place. To
determine which model is at work in
your organization, the two advise
“going to the balcony”—taking a trip
up a figurative flight of stairs for an
overview of the organization, from
which it is usually easy to assess what
is really happening.
However it is achieved, Shealy believes
a culture that summons the talent and
energy of the widest array of people is
the one that will serve an organization
best in the long run. “In an era of the
knowledge worker—at the very time
when we most need intellectual capi-
tal—managers too often isolate them-
selves from it,” he says. “The greatest
untapped resource in most organiza-
tions is the intellectual capital and spirit
of the employee.”
— tom krattenmaker is director of
Authorised for educator review use only by Naeem Tahir, Riphah International University. Expiry date 28-Mar-2022
news and information at Swarthmore
College and a freelance writer.
Usage permitted only within these parameters otherwise contact info@thecasecentre.org
Further Reading:
All Hat and No Cattle:Tales of a Corporate Outlaw
by Chris Turner (1999,Perseus Press,251 pp.,$25.00,
available through local and online bookstores )
Reframing Organizations:Artistry,Choice,and Leadership
by Terrence E.Deal and Lee G.Bolman (1997,Jossey Bass,
448 pp.,$42.95,Tel.800-956-7739 or www.josseybass.com)
5