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corporate culture

Give and Take and Corporate Culture

give, gain and growAt your place of work, is it a good idea to ask for help? If you do, are you considered weak? Are you happy to ask for help or hesitant?

These simple questions about your own behavior can help illuminate your corporate culture. More importantly, they can help you understand whether your culture is pointed toward success or failure. That’s the gist of a new book, Give and Take, and an accompanying article, “Givers Take All: A Hidden Dimension of Corporate Culture” in the McKinsey Quarterly.

The author, Adam Grant, suggests that organizations should focus on developing a “giver culture” rather than a “taker culture”. Grant takes the example of various intelligence agencies in the period after the 9/11 attacks. The single best predictor of effectiveness was “… the amount of help that analysts gave to each other.”

What are the characteristics of a giver culture? It’s a long list and includes, “… helping others, sharing knowledge, offering mentoring, and making connections without expecting anything in return.” In taker cultures, on the other hand, “…the norm is to get as much as possible from others while contributing less in return.”

Grant summarizes the benefits of giving cultures, including increased productivity, improved customer care, greater innovation, and lower turnover. So why don’t more organizations commit to creating giving cultures? Because most organizations are set up to be competitive. Only one person can get that promotion. If my department gets a larger budget, yours gets a smaller one. It doesn’t pay for me to help you.

Grant suggests a variety of steps that executives and managers can take to reap the benefits of more giving cultures. One is simply to “keep the wrong people off the bus.” In the recruiting (and promotion) cycles, focus on identifying, hiring, and promoting givers rather than takers. How do you identify a taker? Three ways:

  • Takers say “I” rather than “we” – they take the credit for themselves when it should be shared. (I’ve commented on this regarding the job interview process).
  • They kiss up, kick down – managers may see them as supportive but subordinates will see them as little tyrants. Be sure to get references from subordinates.
  • They badmouth others – similar to kiss up/kick down, takers will derogate others to improve their own relative status.

While you can hire and promote givers over takers, ultimately managers need to set the example that others can emulate. If you want employees to think outside the box, then you should think outside the box. If you want to create a giver culture, then be a giver yourself. If you pay it forward, you’ll soon be paid back.

Culture – Masculine/Feminine

Gender SymbolsWould you prefer to: 1) work the same number of hours and earn more money, or; 2) work fewer hours and earn the same money? According to Geert and Gert Jan Hofstede this question can help us ascertain whether a culture is “feminine” or “masculine”.

The Hofstedes are academic researchers who study the influence of national cultures on organizational behavior. The Hofstedes write that there are five basic dimensions of culture: 1) power distance — the degree of equality/inequality in a culture; 2) individualist/collectivist continuum; 3) masculine/feminine; 4) Uncertainty avoidance — the degree to which we believe that what’s different is dangerous; 5) short-term/long-term orientation. I’ve written about the first two previously (here and here). Today, let’s talk about masculine/feminine. I’ll cover the other two in the near future.

According to the Hofstedes, the masculine/feminine dimension has mainly to do with the degree of differentiation between gender roles. In “masculine” cultures, “…gender roles are clearly distinct: men are supposed to be assertive, tough, and focused on material success, whereas women are supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life.”  In “feminine” cultures, “… gender roles overlap: both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life.”

As with their other dimensions, the Hofstedes develop a scale (MAS) and rank order 74 countries. The five most “masculine” countries are Slovakia (MAS = 110), Japan (95), Hungary (88), Austria (79), and Venezuela (73). The most “feminine” countries are Sweden (MAS = 5), Norway (8), Netherlands (14), Denmark (16), Slovenia (19). The United States has an MAS score of 62, making it the 19th most “masculine” country on the list.

The masculine/feminine dimension is the only one of the five dimensions that is not correlated to national wealth. In general, wealthier nations tend to have smaller power distance (more egalitarian), lean toward individualism, are more comfortable with uncertainty, and have a long-term orientation. The masculine/feminine dimension, on the other hand, has no relationship to wealth. We see rich and poor masculine cultures and rich and poor feminine cultures in approximately equal proportions.

In very general terms, masculine cultures are about ego, feminine culture are about relationships. In masculine cultures, status purchases (expensive watches, jewelry) are common and people buy more nonfiction books. In feminine cultures, people buy more products for the home, invest more in do-it-yourself projects, and buy more fiction. In masculine societies, failure at school is a catastrophe and may lead to suicide. In feminine societies, school failure is a relatively minor incident. In masculine societies, competitive sports tend to be part of a school’s curriculum; in feminine societies, they are extracurricular.

In the workplace, the masculine/feminine continuum produces important differences in work content and management styles. In masculine cultures, we might hear people say, “I live to work”. In feminine cultures, we’re more likely to hear, “I work to live”. Answering the opening question (above), masculine societies tend to prefer more salary for the same hours; feminine societies prefer the  same salary for fewer hours.

Job enrichment also varies by culture. In masculine societies, enrichment largely means more opportunities for advancement, recognition, and challenge. In feminine societies, enrichment is more about relationship building and mutual support. In feminine cultures, small is beautiful. In masculine cultures, bigger is better. In feminine societies, careers are optional for both genders. In masculine societies, careers are mandatory for men, optional for women.

You can find the Hofstede’s book here.

 

 

 

Improve Your Vision (Statement)

Several clients have recently asked me to help them craft their vision statements. So, what makes for a good vision statement? Let’s

My vision is improving.

My vision is improving.

start with a few of my favorites:

Google: To organize the world’s knowledge and make it useful.

Lawson: We make our customers stronger.

University of Denver: A private school dedicated to the public good.

US Air Force: Fly, Fight, and Win.

Denver Public Schools: Every Child Succeeds.

National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS): A World Free of MS

What can we learn from these? Here are a few pointers:
  • Keep it short — no more than a dozen words. You want it to be memorable. 
  • Put customer requirements first — too many vision statements start with what the company does. In my opinion, that’s a mission statement. The vision statement summarizes your impact on your customers or the world at large.
  • Know the difference between mission and vision. A mission statement is more about how we do things. A vision statement is about what happens to the world when we do those things.
  • Use the “so what/ so that” process to get to ultimate benefits — start with a statement of what your company does. Then ask yourself, “so what?” Answer with a “so that” statement. Repeat the process until you get to a logical conclusion — that’s probably the benefit you want to focus on. So, let’s say you provide services to hospitals. You start with:

We provide world-class services to hospitals…

So what?

…so that hospitals will be more effective …

So what?

…. so that hospitals can save more lives.

  • Imagine end states, even if they put you out of business — the vision statement of NMSS is, “A World Free of MS”. When we achieve that, NMSS will no longer be needed.
  • Verbs are good — I like the US Air Force statement: four words, three of which are verbs. Active verbs (and actions in general) are memorable.
  • The verb “to be” is not your friend — it’s lazy and verbose. None of my favorite statements include it.
  • Ditto for the verb “to strive” — in your vision statement, don’t strive to do something. Just do it. (Where have I heard that before?)
  • It’s not just words, it’s culture — you can develop elegant phrases but, if they don’t fit your culture, you’ll just create cynicism.
  • Live it —  it’s good to write a statement, it’s better to have it absorbed into your employees’ hearts, and minds, and actions. The only way to do that is to set the example and live the words, even when it’s painful to do so.

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

A new CEO sweeps into your company and announces a new strategy. Your company hasn’t been doing too well so you think it just might be time for a new strategy — the old one wasn’t working, maybe a new one will. Unfortunately, the new strategy doesn’t fit well with your existing culture, which focuses on quality. The new CEO wants to focus on speed — “Let’s get to market before our competitors do — the first mover has the advantage”. Yet your fellow employees think, “There’s always a market for quality. Quality wins in the long run.”

When strategy and culture are at odds with each other, which one wins? Culture wins every time. In fact, Peter Drucker said that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Changing strategy is fairly easy — it’s just an announcement. But if the new strategy doesn’t fit the culture, it’s simply an announcement of prospective failure. First, you have to change the culture.

Watch the video for more information on culture versus strategy.

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