Corporate Culture

The modus operandi, the response to stimuli, the attitude with which employees work, the manner in which an organization chooses to perform and the flow of information within an organization essentially give it a distinct flavor. It is this distinct flavor that we refer to as Corporate Culture.

Often a phrase is used across the business world that every business is unique and each requires personalized attention and customized solutions; well this is why.

Corporate Culture is like a set of rules of engagement developed in any organization. How will departments or functions communicate with each other? What are the rules of acceptable conduct of employees? and much more.

A culture can be created or reinforced. It is in our control to shape the culture that is the best fit or an organization. Like for example, where you have the top management, the middle management as well as the lower management along with all the factory workers aware of the corporate vision and mission statement known to all, long term and short term strategy shared with all, year-end goals known to all and allowing people from all levels to freely contribute for ways that can help improve the organization in developing it as a revered work-place; such corporate cultures have positive impact on the overall productivity, organization psyche, effectively the work environment therein.

Organizations that boast that “our employees are our most important assets” as a part of their organizational philosophy and on the contrary, employees witness executives (senior and junior) being terminated without any fore-warning or personal contact or someone receiving an email explaining where they will be sitting and who will they be reporting to does not show of a strong culture. Training and development costs are stopped in order to cut costs. Where actions consistently reflect a certain culture, this will effectively emphasize to employees what the top management values are than any publicized statement. Actions have to reflect the culture.

As part of an experiment, they once locked 15 gorillas in a huge cage in a zoo. With all those gorillas in the cage, the zoo-keepers started hanging bananas from the ceiling. The gorillas would try to have them on a first come-first serve basis. On the eighth day when the bananas were lowered and the gorillas tried to have bananas, they were flushed with high pressure water from fire hoses. The water at that pressure hurt the gorillas and slowly after three days they realized that even if the bananas were hung up, the water would be fired at them, hence, they stopped jumping for the bananas anymore. However, when these gorillas stopped responding to hanging bananas, they replaced 14 gorillas (which means only 1 from the first batch remained inside the cage) and lowered the bananas, when the 14 went at the bananas naturally, this one from the original batch attacked all others to stop them from going to the bananas and this happened till the new batch realized they would be attacked. The zoo-keepers brought in the original 14 gorillas back to the cage and now with bananas hanging from the ceiling, no gorilla moves an inch.

Then there are companies with either a strong culture or a weak culture. Ones with a strong culture are those where staff responds to effectively and efficiently to work because of their alignment to the organization’s values. Such organizations operate like ‘well-oiled machines.’ On the other hand, a weak culture depends on an authoritarian (or perhaps bureaucratic) approach on management, resulting in limited alignment to organizational values, employee frustration and dissatisfaction from work.

Studying corporate culture is an essential study in change management; change management requires strong leadership and clear communication of the expectation based on the new road map that was already communicated.