Companies making the greatest strides in the three major success areas - competitiveness, profits, growth - know something that struggling ones seem to ignore or refuse to tackle – they have dedicated time and resources to creating and maintaining a healthy organizational culture.
So, what exactly is an “organizational culture” – sounds like something growing on your walls – and why is it the key to business success?
Your organizational, or company culture, is in essence the foundation upon which you operate, and the deal breaker for young talent seeking the right professional fit. It includes such things as:
• the way you make decisions; • what you reward and how you do it; • how and what you communicate;
• whether you operational structure is rigid or flexible; • how you problem-solve (top-down or horizontally?).
Companies still operating in “last century” mode – what’s called the “Autocratic-Bureaucratic” design – will experience • high turn-over (a terrible waste of company resources), • poor customer service performance, and • heightened risk through constant, unresolved conflict and a fear-based mentality, just to name a few maladies responsible for poor business outcomes.
Companies operating from “Collaborative-Democratic” design principles now emphasized in all the best Schools of Management, will experience the opposite – • staff loyalty for low turn-over (a huge boon to the bottom-line right there), • thorough and inspired service performance, and • reduced liability risk from increased ethical behavior and healthy problem-solving.
Just the names of the design principles alone tell you much about the difference between the two approaches, but here’s where it gets a little tricky. Many companies think they’ve created a great work environment, just to learn with a little surface-scratching that they are unwittingly undermining their own efforts through such culture-busters as • insufficient use of best-practices for enhanced staff performance; • poorly developed policies & procedures and/or operational systems/tools, and • a lack of actual knowledge about what motivates their employees vs. what they think will do the trick.
If you’re serious about stepping ahead in your competitiveness, making significant strides in growth, and sustaining consistent profitability, invest in assessing – and if need be, changing – your company culture, to one that has been proven to best reap these results. Look at it this way, if it’s right for the likes of Whirlpool, Lenscrafters, and Coca-Cola, it will serve you well, too.
To learn more about this author, visit Terri Benincasa's Website.
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Terri Benincasa
(Visit Terri's Website)
Terri Benincasa, Founder/CEO of Benincasa
and Associates, Inc. Transition Coaching
in the Tampa Bay area, has managed Human
Service Organizations for over 20 years.
As a Business Coach & Consultant, she has
been turning around company’s cultures -
from dysfunctional (read underproducing,
poor customer service, loss of revenue) to
healthy (loyal staff, happy customers,
increased revenues) - across the country
for the past 10 years. This includes
deftly handling the development of
leadership at all staff levels,
eliminating personnel problems, the
foundation of business health.
With a double Masters in Counseling
Psychology from Columbia University, Terri
is clinically trained in the art/science
of human behavior, specifically as it
relates to multi-cultural settings like
businesses. As a Personal Coach, Terri
specializes in transitions experienced by
parents of teens, and Baby Boomers.
In Tampa Bay, Terri has been on ‘Daytime,’
helping women learn skills to achieve
professional success, she has hosted her
own coaching segment, ‘What Works’ on
PAX-TV, and is currently the host of
“Boomer Nation” on WTAN AM getting Boomers
back on top of their generational game.
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