THE POWER OF ORGANIZATION CULTURE


Among the greatest tragedies to hit the American space program have been the crashes of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. In the "Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report" (August 2003), the investigation board headed by Chairman Harold W. Gehman, Jr., Admiral, U.S. Navy (retired), concludes that the doomed flight of Columbia was attributed as much to "organizational failure" as technical failure. In the executive summary, the investigation board states:

Cultural traits and organizational practices detrimental to safety were allowed to develop, including: reliance on past success as a substitute for sound engineering practices organizational barriers that prevented effective communications of critical safety information and stifled professional differences of opinion; lack of integrated management across program elements; and the evolution of an informal chain of command and decision-making processes that operated outside the organization's rules. (vol. 1, p. 9)

While many will argue that organization culture has only a minimal impact on business, this investigation board has clearly identified culture as one of the major two areas of breakdown at NASA. Culture does drop to the bottom line.

In today's interconnected environment, task achievement alone will not propel an organization—or its stock valuation—to where its stakeholders demand that it go. In the Dual Age of Information and Connections, creating the value and innovation needed to move a company to the next level requires a focused effort on harnessing and releasing human potential and creativity. In most organizations, the worse things get operationally or financially, the more people tend to hunker down and do things. Ready, fire, aim. Or, fire, fire, fire. The mantra "better, faster, cheaper" can move organizations only so far. Then stuff starts to break.

Smart business people know that the route to "better, faster, cheaper" is, ironically, slower. Building relationships, communicating needs, and doing it right the first time result in less rework and higher-quality output, faster and cheaper. The only way to work smarter, not harder, in today's overloaded mega-information, hyper-connected society is through knowledge sharing. Smart partners know that sharing information is the currency of success and that building a collaborative culture to enable that to happen is the next logical step.

To accomplish this goal of sharing information, an organization needs to have in place a process that enables everyone to slow down under stress and be guided by leaders grounded in the personal mastery of being smart partners. Ideally, the organization infrastructure includes a grounded, compelling strategic framework, aligned strategies and tactics, agreements on priorities and allocation of resources, the right people with the right skills in the right jobs, and reward and compensation systems that drive the right behaviors. A plan must be in place to help people within the organization continue to hone their partnering skills, with the goal of making them smarter partners. Smarter than the competition.




Powerhouse Partners. A Blueprint for Building Organizational Culture for Breakaway Results
Powerhouse Partners: A Blueprint for Building Organizational Culture for Breakaway Results
ISBN: 0891061959
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 94

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