Organisational Culture is Everyone’s Responsibility

Organisational culture is the attitude and behaviour of the people involved in an organisation, a company, or any entity.  This is made evident in the way people interact with each other, with their internal and external customers in that organisation, and the subsequent decisions they make based on those interactions.  The organisational culture encompasses the work environment, the mission and vision, the leadership style, values, ethics, expectations, and goals. 

As has generally been practised, organisational culture is disseminated via a top down approach, as in a command type structure.  It began with how management interacted with the staff, and the examples gleaned from this, that staff apply to each other.  Essentially, the board sets out some guidelines, often based on input from external consultants.  They create the mission statement, and core values, as guidelines.  These guidelines are then sent to Human Resource.  Human Resource will then design a campaign around these core values, and include perks and rewards.  There will likely be, as part of some industry or service standards, some form of 360^o survey.  This creates a feedback loop, and this culture eventually loses its meaning, and ossifies into set practises. 

This is an obsolete approach.  Modern organisations and businesses require agility at all levels.  Agility in decision making requires empowerment.  Empowerment means initiative must be encouraged.  This flattens organisational structure and devolves decision making down the hierarchy.  In an age of activist consumerism and social media, crises of integrity within organisations can spin out of control, and affect goodwill and revenue.  We live in an age where there is an intensified focus on inclusiveness, diversity, and equality.  This extends to gender relations, race relations, religious relations, and even sexual orientation.  It is impossible for any organisation to remain absolutely agnostic towards these issues.  These are not issues that management can afford to compartmentalise, and simply delegate to another Human Resource campaign. 

The proper approach is one of shared values, and common understanding.  Everyone in the organisation is responsible for shaping an organic set of values that all can subscribe and adhere to.  This makes every person part of the team, and accountable.  As opposed to a top down approach, there is direct personal accountability.  There is no amorphous, anonymous Human Resource “committee” that bears sole responsibility.  This means organisational culture has been expanded from merely bureaucratic formal practices to include informal practices and behaviours as well, whether explicit or implicit.  What is clear, is the intent of culture, not the definition of culture.  The intent is to advance the organisation’s stated goal.  For a company, it would be market penetration and growth. 

We can, however, still assign specific roles to different strata of the hierarchy.  In the case of the board of directors or management council, their role is to set forward the parameters of what would constitute the desired culture.  The purpose of this is to ensure that the culture developed aligns with the strategic goals of the organisation or company, and addresses the interests of all stakeholder. 

The senior management, directly involved in the shaping of this culture, cultivates it through goal setting, hiring practices, putting forward strategic objectives that shape the overall culture of the company.  This begins with hiring personnel whose values align with the organisation, putting in place campaigns, practices, and training that advance these, and being exemplars of these values.  Much of these actions are normally directed through Human Resource.  Human Resource not only designs and implements these programmes, but it gets other stakeholders involved in formulating these practices, and creating documentation to monitor, manage, and document these efforts. 

In this era, there is also the consideration of risk management pertaining to possible discrimination, and other forms of unethical bahaviour.  This has a direct impact on the organisation’s or company’s ability to raise funds or generate revenue.  This means implementing a system to monitor for such lapses, and having a whistle blower programme at all levels.  Just as there s goodwill, there is also badwill, which have an outsized impact on capitalisation, and market growth. 

Middle management is directly involved in interpreting strategic outlines of company culture as part of best practices, and reinforce that culture through staff interaction.  They handle local teambuilding, recommend hires and firings, and create opportunities for team ideals and values to be reinterpreted within the framework of desired company culture.  They are the people in the frontlines of a culture war. 

Everyone is involved providing some form of input, taking ownership of their role in shaping what is eventually that organisational culture that all can adhere and subscribe to.  This includes consideration for customer perspectives, and desired experience.  This includes considerations for employee and vender needs.  This includes opportunities for feedback.  This is where team building begins. 

At all these levels, considerations of values or organisational culture must be overtly a part of any formal meeting agenda, no just in terms of compliance and bonuses, but as part of ongoing organisational development.  Regular audits specific to this should be commissioned by Human Resource to factor in changes in wider societal culture, people’s priorities, organisational cultural strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities, anticipated challenges such as demographic changes, and gaps that may develop, whether internal or external. This means always maintaining a series of conversations across all levels from the lowest to top management. 

Organisational culture is also a major consideration in succession planning, recruitment, and training.  There has to be a balance between guarding against ossification, to evolving away from core principles.  This requires vetting internal and external messaging.  Just as we conduct marketing campaigns to cultivate external customers, we need internal campaigns that are equally consistent in message for the team, the internal customers and stakeholders. 

Essentially, when people are part of the process of cultivating an organisational culture through shared values, they are invested in the organisation’s growth and success.  That means empowerment.  That means allowing some degree of autonomy.  That means encouraging the development of initiatives.  This requires a new form of leadership that still needs to be exercised at the top, and then cascaded down.