What Is Organizational Culture?

Organizational culture is the personality of any organization. It is made up of four competing forces all working at the same time.

Types Of Organizational Culture:

• Power Culture is the need/want for authority by positional power, decision making and status. The more prevalent the power culture is, the more things get done in a top down manner.
• Role Culture is "by the book culture" in which decisions are made according to a hard and fast set of SOPs or regulations allowing limited personal decision making. We get it right, but flexibility is not allowed.
• Achievement Culture is the culture of people. In these cultures people are taking risks and using initiative inventively. These culture are admired but difficult to achieve and can be very high stress without the proper amount of support.
• Support Cultures are places where people care for each other, the customers and support tradition, values, ethics and add value to society. While wonderful places to belong to, they can also be so supportive that no one wants to ever rock the boat.

If you found yourself trying to pick one it might help you to know that regardless of the work done, all four exist in every company. Balance is everything and the balance you choose dictates the results you want to achieve.

Why Change your Organizational Culture?

There are several reasons why you might want to change your culture:

• You may want to move your company from being reactive (customers come to us) to proactive (we go to the customer). This is the case in many businesses experiencing new competition or mature markets with declining curves. This is sometimes called creating a sales culture.
• To be a better and more attractive employer. We all know that the best places to work get the best employees and culture plays a large role in determining work life and enriched environments.
• You have merged with another organization and their way and your way of doing things is/was very different. We once helped a bank that was overwhelmed by the merger with another bank and a new President make the transition to one cohesive culture. This bank went on to become the best place to work in the State of Maine.
• Culturally rich organizations make more money. We place this one last because we wouldn't want this to be the first thing you see or the first reason to change culture, but it is true. Organizations that have great cultures serve their customers and clients with a level of excellence that lesser organizations can't match. Along with this we know it is impossible to take care of customers if organizations can't take care of their own people.

What does Priority Learning do to help you change your culture?

Changing culture means going back to those things that describe the best of your culture like visible behaviors and practices within the formal (procedures and regulations) and informal structures (internal communications, shortcuts, and the way things get done), reward systems, communication and decision-making processes, and inside and outside relationships. We need to examine rites and rituals that perpetuate the norms of group behavior associated with success. And finally, we look at the individuals who personify organizational beliefs and values typically. These heroes and role models are at the beginnings of change and need to be recognized and built upon. Your values shape your approaches and they in turn shape your behaviors. In other words, it's a big circle that is repeated over and over.

How do we do it?

We build, facilitate, develop and assist your Cultural Steering Team. Have we thrown you a curve ball with the term Cultural Steering Team? Picture a group of people you chose from your workforce to work with us here at Priority Learning or on your premises. These people are generally loyal, hard working, serious, and professional but we want challengers and mavericks also. Someone has to do the work and long ago we learned that if we do the work we will own the process and its outcome so we became facilitators of the process using your people to build and implement it successfully. They don't work alone. Each member of the steering team has a constituency made up of members of the workforce that serve as their advisory or feedback board of directors. We send each steering member back to constituency between sessions to seek advice and get buy-in. We address organizational values, behaviors, systems, results and heroes with this steering team and build them into the culture your organization wants through a Cultural Charter System. Another curve ball... Charter System. The Steering Team writes a Cultural Charter which, when completed, becomes the new culture described in a document. The steering team writes it and the constituency approves it. Then and only then can we start to help the organization build new systems that eventually changes organizational behaviors that turn into the new culture for the organization.

Pretty simple? It is even easier than it reads as long as you look at the long view. The culture that is in place to be changed is there because of some very key people and valid reasons. Making the cultural changes can represent change in its rawest form for those individuals and their reasons in the existing culture.

What Priority does in the Organizational Design/Change process...

Steps in the Cultural Process

1. Choose the Steering Team

Administer the cultural diagnostic to the entire organization, which includes: demographic breakouts scoring preparation

2. Initial Steering Team meeting

Analyze of results by: Review the findings Identify areas of opportunity Create a comprehensive cultural report for management and the steering team

3. Report out the results of the cultural diagnostic to: The Management Group Unveil the plan for building culture

4. Preparation of the Steering Team product: Description of the work and vision Building a strong steering unit Role clarification Constituency and communication Scheduling

5. Cultural Component Identification: Elements of current culture External forces Internal forces Constituency check

6. Cultural Charter Development: Identify cultural components Research areas of opportunity Cultural component drafts Cultural charter statements

7. New Cultural Infrastructure Development: a) Component strategies b) Implementation strategy c) Measures and matrixes d) Contingency planning e) Steering role in implementation f) Systems of perpetuation

The Time Factor

Cultural change takes time. When it is done correctly, it has a minimal negative impact on the workflow and productivity, which means that all caution needs to be given to move the process along without disrupting the vital operations of the organization. At the same time it is impossible for the process to be invisible. People will know "something is going on" and will be naturally curious. We work with this natural curiosity by building in strong communications and feedback systems and invite participation through the Steering Team process. We also know that the members of the Steering Team have jobs to do and we try to schedule meetings that work around their responsibilities. This dictates how quickly the charters and strategies can be developed. In most cases the organization that embarks on cultural work is more concerned with quality and is not focused on the "quick solutions".
This may sound complicated but we have a few considerations for you to remember. This sort of change takes time and cannot be rushed. We always say that it's a marathon and not a sprint. It is important that organizations own what they create and we ask each Steering Team to become more and more involved in the design and implementation of the culture.

Communication builds trust and trust builds amazing cultures. We will work hard to earn your trust and keep you in the loop. As long as you help us, we will build an amazing culture that we can all be proud of.

• Typically, from beginning to implementation the entire process of cultural change takes one year to begin.
• For the culture to become ingrained and a "way of life", depending on the size of your organization, it can take as little as 24 months or as long as 60 months.

However long it takes, the cultural change lasts as long as the charter is used and becomes a working document for change.