A New England lumber and hardware retailer was concerned about keeping the chains out of his market. The third generation owner was sorting through ideas for a competitive edge. He knew it couldn't compete with the chains on price or product selection. Service was a possibility, but the chains trained their employees well in that area, too. He experimented with advertising, he redesigned the "look" of the stores, he automated inventory tracking and financial processes and he published an employee handbook for the growing number of new employees.
And then a long time employee reminded the young owner of a well known story of how his grandfather extended credit to his employees during the depression in the 1930s, and how active and generous his father had been in the community all his life. The employee added that it was his opinion that people came to work at the company because of this long tradition of fairness and caring, and they hoped that the current owner would continue it.
The owner realised that if he could attract the best employees, and treat them the way his grandfather and father did, those employees would provide a better shopping experience than the chains ever could. He also knew that the company had grown to a hundred employees, and that he would have to institutionalise the caring and fairness values of his forefathers. And so he began a culture awareness and culture change program, to reinforce those processes and management practices that reinforced the values and drop those that were contradictory.
Today he still owns the market.
Culture change is neither quick nor easy, its not for the fainthearted and no one, not even the president, can escape the requirement to assess and change.
If your business is facing significant challenges or opportunities, and you are planning to acquire or merge with another business, or introduce a new product line, automate your operations, reorganize, reengineer or restructure, your culture can help or it can hinder. It pays to assess.
Why You Should Change Your Organization's Culture - To learn more about this author, visit John Brennan's Website.
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John Brennan
(Visit John's Website)
John Brennan Ed.D.
Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal
Development, LLC, a training and
development firm. Interpersonal
Development has provided sales training
and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps
from over 100 companies.
A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan
received his doctorate from the University
of Rochester. His dissertation researched
the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling
Technology in training people in
interpersonal skills. While he has spent
most of his career designing or delivering
training, he was also a Vice-President of
Sales of a training and development
franchise with operations in 25 markets.
Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered
sales training in North America, Asia,
Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He
has been a guest speaker at numerous
national and regional professional
conferences.
When Microsoft wanted Best Practices
articles on sales for their web site, they
called Dr. Brennan. The results are at office.microsoft.com/e
n-us/FX011387391033.aspx
His firm’s clients have included Volvo,
The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman
Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the
Economist Group and countless small
businesses.
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