If your company was human, what kind of person would it be? Would you choose it as a friend? Want it beside you in the trenches? Carmen Parnos on the importance of company culture.
A friend of mine recounted recently how he applied for a job some years back with a well-known international oil company, which highlighted the different cultures that exist in companies.
During the third interview, which took place over lunch at a prestigious city restaurant, the senior executive from the company, a very polished Englishman, said to my friend in passing, "Of course, X company is not a place for hothouse people, nor aesthetes."
Keen to win the prized position, my friend immediately – and rather hastily, he later admitted – assured the executive that he was neither of those two things, and the conversation moved on to other matters.
He got the job, only to discover later that the company had a rigorous, dog-eat dog working environment that was very different from the rather genial one that existed at his previous employer – another major international group.
(He subsequently learned that an aesthete is a lover of beauty, and a ‘hothouse person’ is someone who has to be nurtured and encouraged, as compared to the rugged type who can survive and prosper under any circumstances.) Companies have cultures, the way that people have personalities. Relaxed or formal, conservative or entrepreneurial. Combative or affable.
One very prominent Australian blue chip company had the policy for many years that if an employee came across a director in the head office lift, they were not to speak unless spoken to first. The director had to initiate first contact – a bit like royalty.
You would be unlikely to find such a policy at, say, Google, which has an informal corporate approach and has just been voted by Fortune magazine the best company in the
The successful advertising executive who has excelled in the highly creative atmosphere of a London-based agency, would perhaps find a German car manufacturer’s approach culturally challenging. Similarly, the IT specialist may not fit into a chemical company where chemical engineers usually reign supreme. These are functions of the culture of an organisation.
The key question that CEOs, business owners and entrepreneurs need to ask is what kind of culture they want for their business.
I would hazard a guess and say that the answer is something like: One that has high performance winning teams and meets (and exceeds) its operating and profit objectives.
How does one achieve these high performance winning cultures? And where do companies go wrong? It’s probably self-evident, but a constructive and effective culture begins with the CEO. Direction, themes, inspiration and course setting come from the top.
High-performance teams have a high level of cooperation and everyone feels empowered. Voluntary effort comes from employee commitment, and commitment comes from empowerment. Empowerment is a function of several important factors: authority, information, resources, accountability and the belief that the individual’s contribution counts.
Getting the right people is central to building a high performance environment. You need people who can identify problems, consistently produce top quality work on time, work across organisational boundaries and keep the customers happy. When you only hire the best and brightest, you don’t always get the most productive team players.
Obviously, it’s not possible to transform every average worker into a luminary. However, compelling standards of excellence can enable people to do ordinary things in an extraordinary way. The team should push itself to consistently lift performance standards.
Employees who establish standards of excellence for themselves believe they can control the events of their life. They act based on those standards, and they do control their life because they take responsibility. People who accept responsibility will act to make things right, because they believe it’s within their power.
This kind of empowerment, the feeling that each person is a co-designer of substantial organisational changes, is what breeds commitment, trust, and helps workers reach new peaks of excellence and achievement – in short, a high performance, winning team.
As for my friend, he decided that his hothouse aesthete personality was best suited to a culture that suited his quirky intellect. He has chosen consulting life where he has prospered and is currently smelling the roses.
Carmen Parnos is CEO of the
