Corporate Culture and Change Management
By: Saifullah Khan
Courtesy: The Human Matrix (www.thehumanmatrix.com)
Every organization has its own unique culture or value set. Most organizations don’t consciously
try to create a certain culture. The culture of the organization is typically created
unconsciously, based on the values of the top management or the founders of an organization.
The importance of corporate culture is growing as the result of several recent developments.
Companies are encouraging employees to be more responsible and act and think like owners. In
exchange for more flexible work schedules, employees are expected to always be “on-call.” With
the demise of more traditional communities (e.g. neighborhoods, etc.), companies are filling
employees’ need to belong to a community. At the same time companies are encouraging
teamwork and the formation of teams.
Culture plays a vital role. Leaders must learn to harness the positive aspects of a culture in the
change efforts. Culture is much like the water in an aquarium. While it is largely invisible, its
chemistry and life-supporting qualities profoundly affect its inhabitants.
Leaders effecting an organizational transformation must understand the vital role that
corporate culture plays in any change efforts. The biggest problem with such a task is that the
most powerful individuals stand to lose the most. Often, they will resist the changes necessary
to move ahead in order to avoid losing power.
Corporate culture can help in bringing about change in the following ways:
Provide the key to mastering change. - Corporate culture is an ever-evolving process and
invariably it is a part of change that takes place in an organization. Corporate culture if
implemented properly will help in Mastering change so that whatever the change may be, it can
be incorporated into the organization without creating any huge difficulties / neglect from
employees.
Build new standards of communication that get better results - Agreement on beliefs and
values facilitates communication. If Management wants to connect with all of their staff, they
need to combine three styles of effective communication: emotional, factual, and symbolic.
These can be built into the corporate culture, thus making it a part of the organization itself.
Create greater customer satisfaction - Customer satisfaction has become the most important
aspect of any service industry; corporate culture can help you by preparing you to give the
customer what they must have i.e. build a communication that allows your people to succeed and
increase the speed and value of organizational learning.
Cooperation between employees - Shared values may enhance goodwill and mutual trust,
encouraging cooperation. This will help in any new implementation, as there would be a
coordinated and collective effort from all.
Decision-making - Shared beliefs and values lead to more efficient decision making since there
are fewer disagreements about which premises should prevail.
Employee Commitment - Strong cultures foster strong identification and feelings through
beliefs and values the employee can share with others. This would help the company
accommodate change or implement anything new keeping in mind that they have a set of
committed employees. Therefore they need not worry about attrition as a result of any change
that may be implemented.
Corporate behavior - Culture helps organization members make sense of their behavior by
providing justification for it. This would enable a smooth implementation of any change that
might be proposed.
A good corporate culture will by all means help in change and a perfect implementation would
fasten and ease the change implementation that is required.
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