Franchise Flag Maker » Organizational

Tips for Improving Organizational Culture

salsabilahanun — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:01:24 +0000

Improving organizational culture has become a necessity in today’s ever-changing business environment. People want to work for a company where they can be happy and balance work and life. Organizations who treat their members well have experienced a better retention rate, an increased productivity and a happier overall culture.

Improving organizational culture can be a big challenge for the organization and its members. Focusing on a few important steps will help you get started in improving organizational culture Getting the right training for your employees is the first step toward improving organizational culture. The other important steps for enhancing organizational culture include:

Analyze your organization’s existing culture and compare it with customers’ expectations and perceptions.

Form a diverse team of interested and enthusiastic people in an organization to enhance the organizational culture.

Get your team to discuss the current culture and explain the parts of the culture that are already great and need to be supported. Then create a vision of the culture you want to create, taking into account the entire current picture of the organization.

Provide the appropriate training to the team members regarding the vision of the culture.

Communicate to everyone to bring awareness about the team and organizational leadership, that this isn’t a band-aid, quick fix; but an ongoing, strategic intention to build a more attractive culture that fits the needs of the organization and that can improve its culture.

Get the cultural team excited. Help the team recognize that not everyone else in the organization is going to think that these efforts are worthwhile immediately. Remember that enthusiasm is contagious. Do what you can to keep the enthusiasm of your team high. If their excitement falters, remind them of the vision they created to re-invigorate them.

Culture improvement is like any other change, as it requires champions. The champion needs to be someone who is passionate about creating the new culture.

Any change will have a greater chance of success with momentum. Thus, get started but be committed to building momentum and staying with it. It will be one of the most rewarding efforts you and your team will ever engage in and with this you can bring great improvement in your organizational culture.

The above-mentioned lists are the specific tips that have enhanced and improved the organizational culture of various organizations. Obviously, these are not the only things you can do to enhance your culture , but these will provide you with a good starting point.

For further assistance, contact the Organizational Culture Center. Organizational Culture Center is a leader in implementing or changing the organizational culture of organizations, whether a profit or nonprofit entity. To receive special reports on organizational culture that includes resources, ideas and advice you can log on to www.organizationalculturecenter.com.

Power Your Business to Ultimate Success With Total Organizational Poise!

hanun — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:05:05 +0000

Banking on the Power of Poise

The power of poise can be phenomenal in both living and non-living systems.

Groups and individuals achieve a far greater performance when they are physically, mentally and emotionally vital than when they are physically, mentally and emotionally sick.

When an automobile is in top condition-all cylinders firing, all mechanical parts in sync, and all the peripherals and accessories are mint- what do you expect to get from it? When a motorway or freeway is spotless and the asphalting is of excellent quality, how will your ride be? When all parts of an organization- the various systems, the processes, the roles and the resources- are in top condition for the strategic situation of the business, how well will it attain its strategic mission?

In all the above cases you will expect the best outcomes possible. You will expect that the automobile will be efficient and give a good account of itself. You will expect a pleasant, albeit, a near perfect ride on the freeway. And you will expect the organization to excel in its strategic mission. Each of the above cases represents a situation when the system is in total poise- its parts are wholesome-in equilibrium, in the best condition, and operate in sync.

When your people are poised for personal excellence-their attributes, attitudes, and talents are in the best condition- your organization is better able to achieve its mission than when these people are in pitiable or average state. A far greater impact is achieved-and sustainably so- when the organizational systems are optimized and are effectively in sync with actualizing people’s attributes. When there is effective synergy between the actualizing people’s attributes and the integrating systems and facets of your organization, your business will achieve breakthrough performance which replicates on a sustainable basis.

The Ultimate Corporate Challenge

Developing total organizational poise and effective organizational synergy is the ultimate corporate challenge for long-run success and growth!

Keen watchers of corporate history and practices will marvel that not many top managers and Board are heeding lessons of limited corporate success arising from poor alignment and lack of effective organizational synergy. You need look no further than the increasing or urgent need for stringent regulations on responsible, transparent corporate governance in the last 10 years globally!

When top managers tend to allow their organizations to remain in a state of partial poise- so long as they are attaining an already defined level of profitability or productivity- their busineses are not motivated to create a vision of long-term corporate excellence. Far too often, and for too long, we see an organization which tends to focus on certain systems to the detriment of others forgetting the interdependent nature of subsystems in an organization.

Too often, and until very recently, many organizations focus on outcomes rather than the means, drivers, processes, and the equilibrants. In fact, had they focused on total poise-which enables all systems to deliver the potential they are capable of delivering-they might have achieved a quantum leap in overall performance; not during a particular fiscal year but through out the business life span.

Of course, it depends on how today’s corporate executives see their mission. It depends on what they consider as their ultimate business mandate. Where the corporate executives see part of their mission as that of ensuring the future of their organizations in business, they will be taking imaginative steps in the direction of total organizational poise.

With that vision, the heart, essence, and strategic thrust of efforts at sustainable high performance is to facilitate the synergy of the systems in a condition of best-fit. It is to imaginatively foster the synergy of personal excellence and corporate excellence for driving sustainable high performance.

The ultimate challenge facing top management in a pulsating business environment is how to achieve and maintain total poise for breakthrough performance. When there is total poise in your organization, your business is in a position to attain breakthrough performance on a sustainable basis.

The truth is that the nature of today’s competition is beyond technology, but what drives technology, creativity and innovations: the superior essence of the human mind and character. This is where the competition will be-and is being-won or lost! Therefore, complacency with the equations and formulas that brought success in the last two decades could be detrimental, if not fatal to sustainable high performance today, and in the foreseeable future.

Exploring The Concept of Total Poise

To understand any phenomenon or paradigm, a first principle is to examine its elements. Then, to consider its essence based on the relationships of those elements. This is how we can appreciate the concept of total poise.

‘Total’ refers to all the key systems as well as subsytems and facets in all aspects of ‘poise’. This indeed is a tall order, but it is the route to long-term success in a global and highly competitive corporate world.

Now consider ‘poise’!.

There are some words that facilitate our understanding and appreciation of ‘poise’…

Some concepts that promote an understanding of poise are wholesomeness, wholeness, integrity, strength, dignity, alignment, equilibrium, synchronization, and synergy.

On the flip side, the essence of poise can be seen from its absence. Such words or phrases as tension, confusion, disturbance, chaos, uncoordinated condition, unrelaxed condition, lack of composure, and risk aversion, vividly demonstrate what lack of poise connotes.

The Nub?…Pursue This Process to Its Logical Conclusion!

How many of your top managers will not feel fulfilled when your organization exhibits strength, wholeness, integrity, and wholesomeness? When you add alignment of all roles and resources with the strategic thrust, effective synergy of skills and systems, and the wholesome equilibrium of the subsystems in the strategic situation you’d be approximating an excelling organization that can stand the competitive fire of these times.

On the flip side, how many of your top managers believe your organization can excel when the following conditions afflict their systems, processes and resources: tension, confusion, disturbance, chaos, uncoordinated condition, unrelaxed condition, lack of composure, and risk aversion?

Fostering Total Organizational Poise

In an organization, total poise occurs when all the key systems and people of the organization are well-developed, empowered and positioned to give the best they can. This results in effective organizational synergy. Ineffective organizational synergy has led to failures of several organizations globally.

Total poise is critical to corporate success, on a sustainable basis. In deed, an organization could attain some measure of ’success’ some of the time with what we can consider as ‘partial poise’. This will not last. But an organization will accomplish breakthrough performance and approximate excellence on a sustainable basis when all its systems are in top condition.

Fostering total poise in organizations is an enduring challenge but an ultimately rewarding enterprise. Total organizational poise results from a deliberate nurturing, empowering, aligning, and positioning of all the key systems of your organization to be the best they could be in order to give the best they could give.

What are those aspects of poise and total-ness critical in your organization’s strategic situation? How do you arrive at consensus across the organization? How do you drive commitment to the total poise equation you are adopting?
What framework are you going to adopt and how will this be institutionalized without being fossilized in your organization?

You and your top managers need to explore and address these, and other such issues if you really care about your ultimate business mandate, that of creating the future of your business today through fostering effective organizational synergy.

Organizational Culture and Its Importance

hanun — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 01:19:26 +0000

The contemporary definition of Organizational Culture includes what is valued; the leadership style, the language and symbols, the procedures and routines, and the definitions of success that characterizes an organization. It is a specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.

Here, organizational values are beliefs and ideas, about, what kinds of goals members of an organization should pursue and the appropriate kinds or standards of behavior organizational members should use to achieve these goals. From organizational values develops organizational norms, guidelines or expectations that prescribe appropriate kinds of behavior by employees in particular situations and control the behavior of organizational members towards one another.

In the past 25 years, the concept of organizational culture has gained wide acceptance as a way to understand human systems. From an open system perspective, each aspect of organizational culture can be seen as an important environmental condition affecting the system and its subsystem. Increased competition, globalization, mergers, acquisitions, alliances, and various workforce departments have created a greater need for organizational culture. Thus, it has become an important pattern for the organization’s development.

Below are important key ingredients of Organizational Culture:

It focuses attention on the human side of organizational life, and finds significance and learning in even its most ordinary aspects.

It clarifies the importance of creating appropriate systems of shared meaning to help people work together toward desired outcomes.

It requires members especially leaders, to acknowledge the impact of their behavior on the organization’s culture.

It encourages the view that the perceived relationship between an organization and its environment is also affected by the organization’s basic assumptions.

Organizational culture is possibly the most critical factor determining an organization’s capacity, effectiveness, and longevity. It also contributes significantly to the organization’s brand image and brand promise.

Organizational Culture creates energy and momentum. The energy will permeate the organization and create a new momentum for success.

The above-mentioned relevance of organizational culture supports the proposition that, in this competitive and globalized corporate scenario, there is huge need of organizational development strategy at various workforce departments, as this can improve the company’s culture. Thus, to fulfill organizations development needs, Organizational Culture Center is the better option! With its outstanding services, OCC provides meaningful responses to the company’s wants, needs and values. Its services range from Workshop, Speaking to Consulting and Coaching.

OCC, Workshop and Speaking service teach cultural enhancement programs to the attendees to improve their cultural effectiveness. It educates current and emerging leaders on issues related to organizational culture. Besides, its associates work parallel with leaders at every level of the organization by engaging and training them to understand workplace culture and to assume their responsibilities as the cultural leaders of their own individual subcultures.

Organizational Culture Center’s thirty years of experience of building culture, combined with VisionLink process, provides a complete guideline of six critical elements of workplace cultural effectiveness with the power of strategic mapping and the balanced scorecard. This proven and highly effective leadership concept brings about a direct linkage between the activities and measurements of every associate at every level of the organization with the vision and strategy of the enterprise as a whole.

Thus, the Organizational Culture Center with all its services has improved the culture of many organizations and has also proved to be the first choice of many of the organizations. It has brought wisdom and passion to the consulting arena and has been an extremely effective process for many of the corporate company’s of America. By availing the services of OCC you, too, can improve your company’s culture. http://www.organizationalculturecenter.com/