1.5 - About University

4.5O RGANIZATIONAL C ULTURE: SAIL OR A NCHOR?Inspired by Terrence Deal, Allen Kennedy, John Kotter, Edgar Schein, Marvin Weisbord, and Alan Wilkins.Organizational culture has had a meteoric ride, from its roots in anthropology, to a refit forcorporate and organizational cultures, to fad status in the 1980s, to fading status in the 1990s.Today, speaking too loudly about culture risks places you into the passé leader group. Yet, likemany leadership tools, it provides valuable insights and lessons.In simple terms, culture is “the way things are done around here.” In Leading Change, JohnKotter defines culture as “… the norms of behavior and shared values among a group of people.”To people who have bought in, a culture is nearly invisible, because it contains all theassumptions that are made about what it is okay and not okay to talk about, how to talk aboutit, what to do, and what not to do. People often notice a strong organizational culture onlywhen they become frustrated by having to interact with a different organizational culture.While taking a quasi-anthropological-cultural approach, this tool outlines the basics oforganizational culture, its importance, and how leaders can work with it.A BRIEF HISTORY OF CULTUREFrom the story told by Noel Tichy and Stafford Sherman of how Jack Welch changed the cultureof GE, “A corporate culture is the sum of the unwritten norms, beliefs, and values thatdefine appropriate behavior.” Anyone who thinks culture is not important should work withJack Welch at GE for a while!Michael Dell voices ambivalence about culture. “I’m often asked how we at Dell manageto maintain the attitude of a challenger even as we continue to grow at record speeds. Cultureis by far one of the most enigmatic facets of management that I have encountered. It’s also oneof the most important. Once a reporter asked me which of our competitors represented thebiggest threat to Dell. I said, ‘The greatest threat to Dell wouldn’t come from a competitor. Itwould come from our people.’”The pivotal book on culture is Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life.Written by Terrence Deal and Allen Kennedy in 1982, it told lots of stories outlining the basicsof corporate culture, its impact, and how to reshape it. Rejecting culture as a useful term in1989, Alan Wilkins wrote in Developing Corporate Character, “I use the term character rather thanculture for several reasons that are related to why we have so often failed at culture change inorganizations. First, culture has been trivialized because so many have written about ‘managingculture,’ ‘managing myths,’ or ‘creating meaning’ without serious attention to how difficultit is to manipulate these complex social processes. Second, culture has been used to thinkabout almost everything organizational, and therefore it has lost its special meaning.” So muchfor the corporate culture into which the concept of “corporate culture” was introduced!Why is understanding organizational culture so important?➠If fish could think, they would assume water is the perfect and natural environmentfor life. Because cultures are largely invisible to the people inside them, they are rarelyquestioned, simply assumed. Appropriate assumptions will cause the organization toSECTION 4 TOOLS FOR DESIGNING PRODUCTIVE PROCESSES AND ORGANIZATIONS 117