Creating a Culture of Competence (eBook)

Chapter 1.

What Makes an Organization Successful?
The Role of Culture and Competence

The question of how to help their organizations succeed is one that senior executives ponder over daily. Every organization has characteristics and features that drive managers crazy and keep them awake at night. If managers allowed themselves to complain out loud, here are some of the things they would say:

• Why aren’t our employees more engaged?
• Why do they come to me to solve their problems instead of coming to me with potential solutions?
• Why do they keep making the same mistakes?
• Why don’t they think about how they can do things better?
• Why aren’t we closing more sales?
• Why don’t more people come up with ideas to solve problems?
• Why don’t people do what they say they’re going to do?
• Why don’t they work harder?
• Why am I doing my work and their work too?
• Why don’t our managers work together to accomplish goals instead of protecting their turf?

If the readers of this book were to fulfill my vision for them, they would change their organization, managers, and employees in ways that diminish the causes that give rise to these questions. They would feel more satisfied with themselves and their organization, as employees initiate the actions that reflect their vision.

A Vision of Organizational Possibility

The vision I hold of organizations is that they are dynamic, vital, nourishing places to work in which people set and achieve challenging goals and take responsibility for their own success. Employees go out of their way to satisfy their internal and external customers, act to improve quality, and learn and grow to become more satisfied and effective team members and employees. Employees engage in conflict constructively to reach sound decisions and communicate openly and directly throughout the organization. They take initiative and seize opportunities for themselves and the organization, and act on their own to solve problems. They pride themselves on their innovation and their creative approaches to product and business development. They anticipate the consequences of different options and alternatives and make decisions based on their analysis. They work together across departments and cross-functionally to achieve optimal solutions. In this visionary organization, employees are encouraged and supported to work at their highest potential and succeed at doing so.

Managers in this organization lead by example. They display the above characteristics to an even greater degree than other employees. They are excellent motivators and developers of people, giving their subordinates constructive feedback and coaching to help them improve their performance. They help employees align themselves with organizational initiatives and objectives and build organizational commitment through creative and continually changing methods.

Senior executives are strategic thinkers and visionary leaders who understand industry trends and develop long term strategic plans based on the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and competitive position. They communicate a vision for the organization and the individuals in it that inspires employees to stretch themselves and work together to achieve the vision. They view the development of leaders as one of their most important job functions and look for opportunities to expand managers’ responsibilities and opportunities.

Finally, all employees, from the CEO down to the most unskilled workers, are committed to continually learn and improve themselves. They are known for their honesty, integrity, and personal credibility. People can be counted on to do what they say they will do. They admit and take responsibility for their mistakes and put themselves at personal risk to take stands based on their deeply held values.

As a consequence of the commitment, behaviors, and traits manifested by all its employees, the organization is recognized as an industry leader and universally respected for its integrity, values, and business success. Its retention rate is among the highest in its industry, and it attracts quality candidates more easily than any of its competitors. It is known as a place where people work hard and morale is high.

The Three Competency Cornerstones Supporting Organizational Success

There are three cornerstones that form the foundation for organizational
success:

• The competence of its leadership.
• The competence of its employees.
• The degree to which the corporate culture and systems foster and maximize competence.

By strengthening these cornerstones, organizations can improve almost every aspect of their functioning and come closer to achieving the vision described above. To understand how these cornerstones interrelate, let us begin with the concept of culture.

Culture is defined as the way of life of a people that is transferred from generation to generation. In business, corporate culture is the way of life of an organization that is passed on through successive “generations” of employees. Culture includes who we are, what we believe, what we do, and how we do it. Most people are not aware or conscious of their culture: culture is to people as water is to fish. Unless we have been exposed to different cultures, we are largely unconscious to our own. We maintain a set of beliefs, act in certain ways, and follow rules and customs, assuming that this way of life is the natural order of things.

When I speak on the subject of corporate culture, I sometimes begin with the following scenario:

Imagine that you are driving on a highway in the desert. It is completely flat, devoid of vegetation, and absent of any sign of civilization. You come to an intersection with another road, and you can see that there is no car in any direction for at least three miles. There is a traffic light at that intersection, and the light is red. Do you stop at the light?

Typically, one-third of the audience say they will keep driving, one-third say they will slow down and then keep driving, and one-third say they will stop. I then ask the people who said they would stop, “Why?” They answer, “Well, because it’s the law.” In other words, they follow the rules because they are the rules. They do not think about whether they fit the circumstance in which they find themselves. Everyday each person unconsciously performs hundreds of small acts in customized ways that form the fabric of their culture.

Another story that illustrates the concept of culture is the custom in the U.S. of men opening doors for women. If you ask men why they do it, the response is generally that it is the courteous or “right” thing to do. If you then ask them what the right or proper thing to do is in the case of revolving doors, you get a more uncertain and confused answer. Should they allow women to go first, because that’s the right thing to do at doorways? Or should they go first in order to push the revolving doors, thereby making it easier for the woman?

The anxiety men experience in this situation results from the conflict between two cultural rules: On the one hand, men should let women go first. On the other hand, men should do the hard work and make it easier for women. Notice how much the word “should” appears in these examples. The concept of correct behavior, the behavior we should be doing, shows the process by which the culture conveys its norms and rules to people. Almost all cultural norms and rules operate on a subconscious level. Once they have been learned, we never consciously think about them unless they’re broken. The invisible walls of culture only become apparent when someone bangs into them.

These examples seem innocuous and irrelevant to business. But what if that red light is a bureaucratic procedure in your company that prevents people from being innovative or satisfying customer needs? And what if that revolving door is a new information system that your employees are not comfortable with and that breaks some unconscious tradition in the organization that is no longer relevant to the current environment? Resistance to change resulting from an adherence to unconscious cultural rules is a problem facing all organizations.

Corporate culture defines the rules of the game. It says, “This is how we do things. This is what we believe. This is how we interact with each other. These are our attitudes towards work.” The rules of corporate culture set the limits of organizational capabilities and effectiveness. One manufacturing client recently related to me a story about an individual who took over the job of operations manager at one of the plants. He was in the job for two years, and during that time made some significant changes in procedures that improved productivity and efficiency in the plant. Because of this success, he received a promotion to a position in another plant. However, six months after he left his initial post, the operations area he had improved had abandoned all his procedures and reverted to the prior practices. The result, of course, was decreased productivity and efficiency. This story illustrates how cultures work: they tend to reject new...