An organisation's culture is the collective behaviour of people in that organisation as defined by:

• the meaning they give to behaviours and activities;
• the values that act as guidelines for people's behaviour;
• the vision the organisation has of itself and into the future;
• the norms and beliefs adopted by its people;
• the language used in the work environment by its people;
• the systems and processes that are used and adapted to satisfy its nature and needs;
• the things they do that have been learned by their own invention, discovery and development;
• the symbols used in the work environment;
• the rituals and habits that people in the organisation display and which the organisation endorses.

These factors combine into a unique mental and attitudinal frame that is shared by employees and which is 'taught', normally informally, to new employees.

The culture gives the people within the organisation a sense of belonging, a group identity, a sense of family and a validation of why they think about things in a certain way.

It offers both an excuse for behaviours and attitudes while simultaneously providing the encouragement for those same behaviours and attitudes.

Culture can also confer on people power, status, authority, rewards and punishment, friendship and respect.

Parts of the culture may be documented into formal statements such as the Organisation's Vision, or the organisation's A Statement Organisation's Values. Other aspects remain informal and rarely documented.

People sculpt culture; people affect people; managers affect people.

Therefore managers and people, by the way they interpret the culture and support or oppose it, can influence the way the organisation's culture deals with matters - such as change.

Some large organisations with complex, distributed or varied activities, may have multiple sub-cultures operating simultaneously. This certainly complicates matters but its people are practised in navigating their way through the complexity.

As an example, a company may have a Head Office culture while its operations in the mine fields may have an entirely different culture. A division of an organisation in one country may (and probably will) have a slightly or significantly different culture to a division in the same organisation operating in another country. The sales function in an organisation may have a different culture to the manufacturing division of the same organisation.

Remember too, that an organisation's culture is itself a sub-culture reflecting many or most attributes of the social and cultural context in which it exists.

It’s easy to suggest that multiple cultures in the one organisation lead to conflict. It certainly may, but most large organisations have multiple cultural nuances that do co-exist. The reasons for this are simple:

• Each culture works in its own context;
• The degree of overlap is minimal. The workers in the mine stay in the mine and the workers at Head Office stay at head office. Most commonly, they interact at senior or functional management level.
• When people of two separate cultures interact, they adopt a third neutral culture within which they will transact their needs. Everyone understands this and knows not to try to impose one's culture on the other.

For these reasons, multi-cultural organisations are still able to work effectively.

That doesn't mean that it's easy or that cultural mismatches never occur; they do, but the presence of sub-cultures does not automatically flag problems or failure.

Culture is one of the hardest (if not the hardest) things to change within an organisation, particularly a large one, yet it’s possible to achieve with care, preplanning, understanding, empathy and wisdom.

Despite the difficulty, culture should never be regarded as a given. Culture exists as a result of the organisation's evolution and its needs. Sometimes the culture helps the organisation do what it’s there to do, and sometimes it hinders its efforts.

As hard as it may be, sometimes it’s necessary to realign an organisation's culture with the organisation's objectives and intent.

The reason this is difficult is because people become familiar and comfortable with the various filters that define the organisation's culture. Being able to play the game is very important in many organisations. No wonder then, that when you attempt to change what people feel secure with, they will resist.

We noted previously that the organisation is never a culture-free zone. Apart from its own evolution, the organisation is composed of individuals, each of whom comes to the organisation with their ideologies and value systems. Sometimes they meld effectively into whichever organisational culture or sub-culture they are immersed in, and sometimes the melding process carries tensions and stress. Organisations are therefore rich with cultural overlays.

I am pleased to announce our second issue of the Independent Consulting Collaboration(ICC) catalogue. ICC is a unique approach to providing expert and experienced business, technical and organisational consulting and advisory skills to corporations and organisations.

ICC is a group of independent specialists (some might say “experts”) who work with management in medium to large corporations and organizations.

 

Between us, we have diverse and recent experience in corporations - helping to manage them, guide them, advise them, and when asked, to ‘fix’ them.

 

The people listed in the attached catalogue of skills and capabilities are extremely competent, experienced and skilled advisors in a wide range of business, technology and organization-related areas.

 

The objective of the catalogue is to provide boards and management with a panel of high quality and technically proficient resources that you will retain, refer to, and call on when you need a particular competence.

 

Advantages of using the ICC include:

• You have one source for diverse expertise;
• You have access to successful, experienced and motivated people;
• You save precious time, money and get the result you want;
• Instead of paying high corporate overheads, you pay only for the service received;
• Rather than going through intermediaries, you determine the most effective way to work;
• In place of surcharges or additional fees there is nothing additional to budget;
• You deal with the expert directly – no middle-party or additional costs or charges.

If you would like a free copy of the ICC catalogue, please email me at jacoby@jacobyconsulting.com.au. Please have a look through the attached document and call me if you have any questions or call the expert advisor directly if you wish to discuss any of the services and capabilities listed.

If short term results were the only objective of shareholders then all shareholders would, over time, gravitate to the optimal short-term stocks. This does not happen thus is demonstrably not true.

Furthermore, if all shareholders only desire short term benefit, then speculative, growth and infrastructure stocks would not exist - and they do.

A discussion that universally categorises shareholders into one benefits camp over another is incorrect because we know from observation and research, that different shareholders want different outcomes and the same shareholder may require different benefits from different stocks. If that were not the case, then fund managers would be largely out of a job.

The only way to resolve the challenge of aligning the corporate endeavours with the desired outcomes of its owners is to establish its shareholder objectives (metrics) in quantifiable terms against the criteria of value, benefit, growth and risk. Management (and the board) are then judged on their ability to achieve those metrics - regardless of whether they are short, medium or long term.