You're in Charge--Now What?: The 8 Point Plan by Thomas J. Neff & James M. Citrin

Author:Thomas J. Neff & James M. Citrin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781400098309
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2005-01-10T18:30:00+00:00

HOW TO ASSESS A CULTURE

The words that most companies use to describe their cultures usually sound comforting: customer focus, excellence, teamwork, shareholder value, entrepreneurial, innovative, responsible corporate behavior, passion, integrity. But of course, these kinds of words don’t necessarily translate into real behavior in real companies. How people actually go about their work, how decisions are made, who gets promoted, how employees interact with one another, what motivates them—these are the things that really count. What makes things especially tricky, especially for an outsider, is that as with real cultures of any type—from corporations to schools, towns, and even nations—most of the really important rules are not written down.

The place to start assessing a culture is to listen, really listen, to how employees describe a place. We believe that within most generalizations there lies an inner core of truth. Just as certain distinguishing characteristics are common and generally true about certain countries—“Germans are regimented and well organized,” or “Italians are passionate and creative,” or “Chinese are entrepreneurial and ambitious”—so too with company labels. These unofficial but generally accepted monikers often accurately define a company’s personality and modus operandi. General Electric is all about general managers being on top of and delivering the numbers. Microsoft lives for writing killer software by the smartest engineers who will go to extraordinary lengths to win. Dell is analytical and measures, systematizes, and optimizes everything. You can’t rise to the top of MTV if you are not a creative. At Amgen, it’s all about the scientists in R&D. The core of Merrill Lynch is its army of retail brokers. You succeed at Cisco Systems by being associated with customer success stories. True Brown UPSers start as package delivery drivers.

Paul Pressler refers to Gap Inc. as “a merchant-centric culture.” Gillette, before present CEO Jim Kilts started shaking it up, was a product-driven organization; so fascinated was it with its own inventions that analysts said it lost sight of whether they satisfied the needs of people who might buy them. After inventing and literally creating new markets from the walkie-talkie to the cell phone over its seventy-five-year history, Motorola too developed an engineering-driven, “build it and they will come” culture.

One of the important points regarding assessing the culture is to think through the implications of trying to change it. When Merrill Lynch appointed Stanley O’Neal as CEO, his lack of history on the retail brokerage side of the business was an important signal that the firm was ripe for change. Amid a chaotic financial services industry environment buffeted by the bursting of the tech bubble, the shutdown of the IPO market, the recession, and 9/11, O’Neal’s relative outsider status from the cultural and historical core of the operation freed him up to lead an aggressive and ultimately highly successful restructuring. He unapologetically cut billions in costs, shaped the management team to his preferences, streamlined decision making, and ultimately repositioned the firm to come out of the recession a leaner, meaner fighting machine.

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