Organizational Culture

Organizational culture
• ‘Culture’ is the set of shared values, norms and beliefs that control the
organization members behavior with each other
• How to diagnose culture? (Geert Hofstede)
• Power Distance Index (high versus low).
• Individualism Versus Collectivism.
• Masculinity Versus Femininity.
• Uncertainty Avoidance Index (high versus low).
• Long Versus Short-Term Orientation.
• Indulgence Versus Restraint.
Uncertainty Avoidance
The building blocks of culture..
‘The Wave’ experiment by Ron Jones
What is ‘Indian’ Culture?
What is ‘Culture’?
• Culture as a set of ‘practices’ and resulting
‘behaviors’
• Touching feet
• Lighting lamps
• ‘Namaste’
• Yoga
• Do practices have any inherent value?
• Culture as a differentiator
• Identity
Practices reinforce structure
Schein’s cultural Iceberg model
Thinking about Values
• Ideology comes from values
• What are Values?
• Negotiables and non-negotiables
• Provide guidance as to what is subjectively meaningful
• ‘Shoulds’
• Values are the core of rules
• See how your decision fits in with the organization
• Values reflect in systems
• Provide indicators
• Use of ‘names’ only – not making a ‘rule’ but a value
Machines, values
and animism
The good and bad of culture: A paradox
theory perspective
• Innovative cultures
• Tolerance towards failure <-> Intolerant towards incompetence
• Failure is tolerated when only a few fail
• Willingness to experiment <-> Not undisciplined experimentation
• Funnel approach: Cast wide, kill fast
• Celebrate learning, not failures
• Psychological safety <-> Brutally candid
• It’s safe to criticize also!
• Sharp criticism. People are expected to defend based on data.
How to build a culture?
• Institutionalized practices
• Kyocera? Zappos?
• Secure buy-in by establishing practices
• Induction, pledges, etc
• Kyocera: Writing essays about the management philosophy
• Culture mapping exercise
Practices that support Taj’s Culture
• Recruitment
• Hinterlands
• Young
• Focus on a pleasing personality
• MT’s not from top tier colleges
• Probably to tone down ambitiousness
• Reskill
• Skill-certification centres
• Unsupervised guest encounters
• Debrief sessions
• Decision making
• Empowered employees
• Tolerance for expenses
• STARS programme
A Culture of ‘customer orientation’
• Customer empathy
• Spend time reading customer messages
• Create mini-personas (archetypes of customers)
• Hire for customer orientation
• What would you do if the customer….?
• Customer insights
• Open up customer insights for everyone
• Functional training in customer analytics
• Direct interaction with customers
• Through events and get-togethers
• Relate compensation to customer satisfaction
Sumeru Software
• What types of outcomes does Sumeru’s culture result into?
• Should Sumeru continue with its culture? Why/ Why not?
• Positive/negative outcomes
Sumeru Software
• Positive outcomes
• Low attrition rates
• Low compensation
• Access to talent pool/advisors
• Low conflict
• Negative outcomes
• Low performance thresholds
• Loss of productive hours in other activities
• Low compensation may discourage high quality talent
Sumeru Software
• What are the behaviors behind these outcomes and the practices
supporting them?
• Can these practices be sustained as the company scales?
• What are the enablers/blockers?
• How does Sumeru get around it?
Sumeru Software
• Behaviors/practices that sustain Sumeru’s culture
• Flexible work hours
• Work as Seva (Lower salaries)
• Meditation
• Group prayers and QnA (Harmony and Dhamal)
• Voluntary teachers in AoL courses
• Recruitment practices
• Customer acquisition
• Potential blockers to sustaining culture and ways around it?
• Groupthink?
• Cultural fit of new hires
• Incentivize AoL participation
• Maintaining right hiring ratios
• AoL resources for ready/voluntary access
• Piggybacking on contemporary spirituality
• Creation of artefacts and architectural spaces
Scaling culture
• Build a ‘toolkit’ of cultural resources
• Documents hiring, fit, trainings to augment the employee thinking process expected out of employees
• Ex. SAP AppHaus
• Define culture in terms of clear, observable behaviors
• Innovation: Tolerance to failure, Experimentation, Collaboration
• Establish simple organization wide practices
• Specific ‘days’
• Greetings
• Artefacts
• You can’t get hold of everyone
• Get hold of the middle line
• Integrate it with processes
• Ex. Buddy system, mentorship
How to build a ‘remote work culture’?
Vision, Mission and Strategy implementation
Decathlon
Adidas
Nike
Sustainability
• Adidas
• Decathlon
• KPI’s and OKR’s