Building a Winning Organization:
What is common to these 4 organizations that is uncommon in the world of business?
ZAPPOS, GOOGLE, SOUTHWEST AIRLINES, CHEVRON
“They have an organizational culture that fosters a winning organization”
ZAPPOS: hires according to a cultural fit, promotes the culture and employee happiness.
GOOGLE: believes that successful company culture leads to successful business and therefore fosters a revolving culture that grows with the business.
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES: employees are encouraged to be a part of the larger purpose and work towards a common goal.
CHEVRON: promotes a culture where everyone looks out and cares for one another and provides the employees with a sense of safety.
Today, nearly 90% of the Fortune 500 companies that existed in 1955 are unrecognizable forgotten companies. Panam, Polaroid, Kodak, Toys R Us are just a few hallowed names that have bitten the dust. Obviously, neither size nor reputation guarantees continued success or survival. Studies reveal that failure to develop a winning organization is the most common reason for organizational decline and demise. And those who have made it have been successful in displaying distinctive performance attributes that sets them apart from others and makes them a winning organization and it all comes down to having a winning corporate culture that becomes the main driver of lasting success.
In an interview with a leading business publication, this is how Michael Dell, founder of Dell computers sums up the spectacular success of his company, “while a superior business model has definitely contributed to the company’s success, what has more instrumental is the relentless corporate DNA development over the years that is just not replicable outside the organization.”
In a very simple way, I see organizational culture as the way things are done in an organization. It is a glue that binds the organization together, and is the toughest thing for any competitor to replicate. In other words organizational culture is the unique corporate DNA that builds the corporate values that drive lasting business success.
It was Peter Drucker who famously said that ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. An organizational culture can absolutely be the deal-breaker or decisive factor when it comes to defining a company’s success.
When it comes to building a winning organizational culture, it just doesn’t happen on its own. It’s much more than statements of purpose from the top, or the inspirational quotes and artwork displayed on the notice board, or the shinning customer testimonials decorating the corporate website, etc. Yes, all that stuff looks nice and gives a pleasant feeling, but it does not in any way define who you are as a company, nor does it alter the very core of your organization. What goes into shaping the organizational culture is corporate vision, shared values, beliefs, assumptions, past experiences, accumulated learnings, leadership competencies and communication strategies. Just having an organizational culture in place does not warrant success. The culture has to be inspiring, value based, strategically aligned, adaptive, collaborative, inclusive, supportive of team building, diversity friendly, improvement oriented, quality focused, growth oriented and customer focused to become an enabler of winning business performance.
Some of the common reasons that erode the winning impact of the culture are failure to create sufficiently powerful guiding coalitions, underestimating the power of vision, tolerating complacency, under communicating the vision, failure or lethargy in overcoming resistance to change, failure to create short term wins and failure in anchoring change.
When it comes to developing an organizational culture, effective and authentic leadership goes a long way in laying a strong foundation and for this a leader can be anyone in the organization who has a profound impact on the organizational thought process that goes into the making of the culture. On their own leaders have to be strongly persuasive in fostering the culture where employees can thrive, grow and contribute to the common good of the business.
However, the gospel truth is that if an organization does not attempt to develop an organizational culture, there will always be the danger of the culture developing itself and also that organization culture does not come into play accidently, if it does so, then as an organization you are at the maximum risk that probably you can ill afford.
An organizational culture is good as long as it fits in context of the business space and business strategy. In today’s rapidly changing economy, “ only cultures that can help the organizations anticipate and adapt to the environmental change will be associated with superior performance over a long time and therefore it follows that cultures that tend to be externally oriented will be more strongly associated with organizational performance than those that are predominantly internally focused.
Jammu Navani
Excellence, Leadership & Entrepreneurship Coach, Management Consultant, Corporate Trainer
jammunavani@gmail.com http://www.jammunavani.com
Experiential Entrepreneurship 