Alison Doyle, writing for The Balance Careers, describes company culture as “the shared values, attributes, and characteristics of an organization.” She goes on to explain its importance by saying “workers are more likely to enjoy work when their needs and values are consistent with their employers.” After all, believing in your work can make it just as fulfilling as how well you’re appreciated or compensated for it.
Company culture can either emerge on its own organically or be intentionally crafted, and it can take many forms: some cultures emphasize hierarchies or strong team-based approaches. Others might promote independent initiative where employees seek out their own opportunities within the purview of the company’s overall mission. Regardless of the form the culture takes, or whether it’s the result of laissez-faire management or laser-focused curation, company culture begins and ends with leadership. Action and inaction are both decisions, and each has its own unique consequences.
Dr. Ron Westrum, a sociologist, published an in-depth analysis of company culture called “A typology of organisational cultures,” which you can review if you enjoy academic articles. However, to make things easier, Jeff Gallimore, writing for Excella, summarizes the “Three Cultures Model” that Dr. Ron Westrum described in his research for us to make it digestible. Let’s take a look:
Three Cultures
In short, cultural organization can be split into three categories: pathological, bureaucratic, and generative. A pathological culture is power-oriented, and tends to have certain hallmarks like low-cooperation (every man for himself), discouraged bridging (stay in your lane), scapegoating for failure, and a strong resistance to change. Employees who speak their minds, whether about new ideas or with concerns, are typically shot down. That’s clearly a negative environment, but it’s common enough that most people can think of a place like that where they’ve either worked or at least knew someone who did.
Bureaucratic environments are rule-oriented, and tend to emphasize at least modest in-house cooperation (teamwork), some bridging (different groups or departments can talk), individual responsibility for failure, and an uneasy relationship with change. Employees with new ideas or concerns are heard but often neglected, with their opinions filed away for review down the road. Most large-scale businesses fall into this cultural model, as its efficiency has been good enough to keep those businesses alive, but most people don’t enjoy working at them. They’re not bad, per se, just uninteresting and often glacially slow.
A generative culture, on the other hand, is performance-oriented. This is the environment businesses should aspire to, especially small ones. They feature strong cooperation, encouraged bridging across the company, failure resulting in inquiry rather than punishment, and a propensity for adaptation. Employees are encouraged to bring new ideas or concerns to light so that they can be addressed and changes can be made. From the outside, these businesses have a culture that might appear chaotic, but for those who work within them, this all makes perfect sense. Generative environments are dynamic, and many employees enjoy their constant sense of renewal, especially because they feel like they have a say in how things work.
Tomorrow
It’s not uncommon for a company to find itself between these three cultural extremes, especially as they’re slowly evolving with the times. But it’s a good idea to be cognizant of where your own business culture is at this time, and just as importantly, where it’s headed. Even if you’ve been hands off with that culture for a long time, knowledge is better than ignorance. In the age of social media and websites like Glassdoor.com, it’s very easy for prospective employees to learn about how your business operates from within. If you want the best applicants, you need a great culture. This is doubly true if you want to keep your best employees as well.
One way for us at The Brandt Group to help you with that is through employee feedback surveys. These are anonymous, and we can customize them to focus on whatever questions you want answered. We can focus, for example, on how comfortable employees feel bringing concerns up the ladder, or whether they feel like they’re allowed to work together on problems, and so on. It’s not enough to know whether they’re happy or unhappy with their jobs: you need to know why.
So, let’s work together to create an ideal company culture at your own business, one that’s nimble, resourceful, and empowered. Reach out today so you can start taking control of tomorrow.
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