This article is part 1 of a 4-part series on creating a strong and effective team and organizational culture
Part 1: “It’s the culture, stupid”
Part 2: The Quest for the perfect team begins!
Part 3: Learning to Fly
Part 4: Coaching for Good
“… I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game.“
– Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Former CEO of IBM
In today’s VUCA world, no single person can be expected to have all the answers and solutions. The staggering amount of information, its complexity, and the rapid pace in which current knowledge becomes outdated, means that employees and teams, and not only managers, are now the organization’s most important asset for success.
Although this change is not new and is often researched and discussed, it seems there is a gap between the current understanding of the situation to the actual implementation of that understanding in the business world.
Indeed, there is a great need for a cultural shift that will empower employees and teams to work, grow and flourish both on the technical as well as on the personal level in order to achieve the new cutting-edge success in the industry.
Research in recent years consistently shows that in today’s world, with its ever-changing global economy, constant competition and quick and successive breakthroughs, organizations can flourish if they implement a strong culture. As an example, in a study of organization cultures and its effect on performance done in Harvard1, researchers observed 200 companies over an 11 years period, discovering that companies with a strong organizational culture grew their net income by 756%, compared to only 1% for companies who did not show a strong culture.
But what is the “right” strong culture for this age? What are the shared values, ideas and behaviors that would allow organizations, employees, and teams to flourish?
In this new 4 part series I will attempt to present research-based evidence on the three most important ingredients in creating such a cultural shift that focus on the true asset of the organizations; the single employee and the team. This culture will allow the employee to flourish by supporting a (1) Safe environment, based on (2) Learning, within a culture that supports the employee in a non-hierarchical manner through (3) Coaching rather than managing.
Go to Part 2: The Quest for the perfect team begins!
References:
1: Kotter, J. P., & Heskett, J. L. (1992). Corporate culture and performance. Business Review.
