4.5
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: SAIL ORANCHOR?
Inspired by Terrence Deal, Allen Kennedy, John Kotter, Edgar Schein, Marvin Weisbord, and Alan Wilkins.Organizational culture has had a meteoric ride, from its roots in anthropology, to a refit for
corporate and organizational cultures, to fad status in the 1980s, to fading status in the 1990s.
Today, speaking too loudly about culture risks places you into the passé leader group. Yet, like
many leadership tools, it provides valuable insights and lessons.
In simple terms, culture is “the way things are done around here.” In Leading Change,John
Kotter defines culture as “...the norms of behavior and shared values among a group of peo-
ple.” To people who have bought in, a culture is nearly invisible, because it contains all the
assumptions that are made about what it is okay and not okay to talk about, how to talk about
it, what to do, and what not to do. People often notice a strong organizational culture only
when they become frustrated by having to interact with a differentorganizational culture.
While taking a quasi-anthropological-cultural approach, this tool outlines the basics of
organizational culture, its importance, and how leaders can work with it.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CULTURE
From the story told by Noel Tichy and Stafford Sherman of how Jack Welch changed the cul-
ture of GE, “A corporate culture is the sum of the unwritten norms, beliefs, and values that
define appropriate behavior.” Anyone who thinks culture is not important should work with
Jack Welch at GE for a while!
Michael Dell voices ambivalence about culture. “I’m often asked how we at Dell manage
to maintain the attitude of a challenger even as we continue to grow at record speeds. Culture
is by far one of the most enigmatic facets of management that I have encountered. It’s also one
of the most important. Once a reporter asked me which of our competitors represented the
biggest threat to Dell. I said, ‘The greatest threat to Dell wouldn’t come from a competitor. It
would come from our people.’”
The pivotal book on culture is Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life.
Written by Terrence Deal and Allen Kennedy in 1982, it told lots of stories outlining the basics
of corporate culture, its impact, and how to reshape it. Rejecting culture as a useful term in
1989, Alan Wilkins wrote in Developing Corporate Character,“I use the term characterrather than
culturefor several reasons that are related to why we have so often failed at culture change in
organizations. First, culture has been trivialized because so many have written about ‘manag-
ing culture,’ ‘managing myths,’ or ‘creating meaning’ without serious attention to how diffi-
cult it is to manipulate these complex social processes. Second, culture has been used to think
about almost everything organizational, and therefore it has lost its special meaning.” So much
for the corporate culture into which the concept of “corporate culture” was introduced!
Why is understanding organizational culture so important?
➠ If fish could think, they would assume water is the perfect and natural environment
for life. Because cultures are largely invisible to the people inside them, they are rarely
questioned, simply assumed. Appropriate assumptions will cause the organization toSECTION 4 TOOLS FORDESIGNINGPRODUCTIVEPROCESSES ANDORGANIZATIONS 117