One Company’s Experience.

Background

In “Lean Corporate Culture Framework” post, I shared the methodology to select and apply eight culture types which briefly mention in below too. “Lean Corporate Culture Framework” is a must read before reading “One Company’s Experience”. In this post, I will try to share an example of how to use, evaluate and apply in an imaginary eCommerce.

1. Caring focuses on relationships and mutual trust. Work environments are warm, collaborative, and welcoming places where people help and support one another. Employees are united by loyalty; leaders emphasize sincerity, teamwork, and positive relationships.
2. Purpose is exemplified by idealism and altruism (self-sacrifice being part of something bigger). Work environments are tolerant, compassionate places where people try to do good for the long-term future of the world. Employees are united by a focus on sustainability and global communities; leaders emphasize shared ideals and contributing to a greater cause.
3. Learning is characterized by exploration, expansiveness, and creativity. Work environments are inventive and open-minded places where people spark new ideas and explore alternatives. Employees are united by curiosity; leaders emphasize innovation, knowledge, and adventure.
4. Enjoyment is expressed through fun and excitement. Work environments are lighthearted places where people tend to do what makes them happy. Employees are united by playfulness and stimulation; leaders emphasize spontaneity and a sense of humor.
5. Results is characterized by achievement and winning. Work environments are outcome-oriented and merit-based places where people aspire to achieve top performance. Employees are united by a drive for capability and success; leaders emphasize goal accomplishment.
6. Authority is defined by strength, decisiveness, and boldness. Work environments are competitive places where people strive to gain personal advantage. Employees are united by strong control; leaders emphasize confidence and dominance.
7. Safety is defined by planning, caution, and preparedness. Work environments are predictable places where people are risk-conscious and think things through carefully. Employees are united by a desire to feel protected and anticipate change; leaders emphasize being realistic and planning ahead.
8. Order is focused on respect, structure, and shared norms. Work environments are methodical places where people tend to play by the rules and want to fit in. Employees are united by cooperation; leaders emphasize shared procedures and time-honored customs.

If you are keen to know an example of companies who has these cultures, or pros & cons of each and more detail information please read my previous post called as: “Lean Corporate Culture Framework”.

Step 0. Introducing Imaginary venture called ACME

ACME is an eCommerce company that also produce some of their own products as well.

ACME’s vision is to be the most convenient online & offline store for customers which will be measured by customer satisfaction (NPS or CES), number of transactions and number of various category elements.

ACME has following typical departments:

• Finance
• HR
• Trading includes merchandizing, search, facets, product, recommendations, Analysis codes, trade reports, concessions, allocation
• Acquisition includes analytics, SEO, affiliates, PPC, tag management and display
• Fulfillment includes returns, carriers, pick, pack, put away, order fulfillment, stock management, etc (totally not related but if you wanna know more about warehouse management read this post of mine)
• Engineering includes Projects (ERP, warehouse, SCM, CRM, etc), Path to Purchase, Personalization, Segmentations, BI, Search, Checkout, Product Detail Page, etc
• Customer Experience
• Content

Step 1. How to Measure?

Before you begin an initiative to shape your organization’s culture, it’s important to explore where it is today. This worksheet and the questions that follow can help you formulate a preliminary assessment of your culture and get the conversation started.

Consider how your organization currently operates, what is valued, how people behave, and what unifies them. Partner with a colleague and independently rate each statement according to how well it describes your organization. Add the two ratings in each row and then rank the eight styles. The higher the total, the stronger the match. Compare your rankings with your colleague’s and discuss the following questions:

1. What do you like most about the current culture? What behaviors and mindsets might you evolve?
2. How effective are your organization’s leaders at role modeling the culture?
3. What are the characteristics of people who are most successful in your culture?
4. When new people don’t succeed in your culture, what is the most common reason?

Step 2. What’s ACME culture profile?

I took the test available in HBR post in here for our ACME company. We should measure this for each department and compare the results however in this example I only take one test and rest of recommendations will be based on assumptions. Let’s have a look at the results:

According to your ranking of what best describes ACME’s culture, your culture seems to have a greater orientation toward Purpose and Learning. Organizations with this kind of culture emphasize both contributing to a greater cause and inventiveness. People tend to give back to their communities and spark new ideas.

Advantages of Purpose:

• Fostering diversity and inclusivity
• Social responsibility

Disadvantage of Purpose:

• Over-emphasis on a long-term purpose can distract from immediate concerns

Advantages of Learning:

• Innovation and agility
• Organizational learning

Disadvantage of Learning:

• Over-emphasis on exploration can lead to a lack of focus

Now let’s look at the answers for some specific questions:

Step 3. Quick Improvements for ACME

1. Culture is spread primarily through social interactions and in group settings. To encourage certain aspects of a culture to be brought to the forefront, consider initiating purposeful conversations around focused cultural themes (these can take a variety of forms, such as one-on-one conversations, forums for informal socialization, learning and reading groups, and social media campaigns). Tools like Workplace and Lattice are very useful for this step.
2. When evolving a culture, leaders serve as important catalysts for change. To align leadership with the aspirational culture, identify current leaders who will serve as role models, select new leaders who embody the culture evolution, and support leaders with targeted development and training. Tools like Workplace, Culture Amp and Lattice are very useful for this step.
3. Company processes such as training and onboarding programs for new employees can help reinforce core values and norms. To ensure that desired culture changes to the organization last over time, consider targeted design interventions such as updates to organizational structure, incentive systems, talent management practices, and knowledge management systems. Tools like Workday, Lattice and greenhouse are very efficient for this matter.

Step 4. How to Shape the Culture?

First you must identify culture targets. The best ones have some attributes in common: They align with the company’s strategic direction; they’re important to execute; and they reflect the demands of the external business environment. A good target should be both specific and achievable. For example for our ACME, “We value our customers” can create ambiguity and lead to inconsistent choices regarding hiring, developing leaders, and running the company. A better version might be “We build genuine and positive relationships with customers; we serve our customers with humility; and we act as ambassadors for our rich brand heritage.”

1. Understand the current existing culture. Examine your culture — the company’s founding and heritage, its espoused values, subcultures, leadership style, and team dynamics. (Like mentioned in Step 2 for ACME). Identify your culture’s strengths and examine its impact on your organization today. Interview key stakeholders and influential members of the organization as needed. Tools like Workplace, Culture Ampand Lattice are very useful for this step.
2. Consider Strategy & your environment. Assess current and future external conditions and strategic choices and determine which cultural styles will need to be strengthened or diminished in response. Formulate a culture target according to which styles will support future changes.
3. Frame the aspiration in business realities. Translate the target into organizational change priorities. It should be framed not as a culture change initiative but in terms of real-world problems to be solved and solutions that create value. Focus on leadership alignment, organizational conversations, and organizational design as the levers to guide the culture’s evolution.

Step 5. ACME each department business problems

Seems ACME has a greater orientation toward Purpose and Learning. Organizations with this kind of culture emphasize both contributing to a greater cause and inventiveness. People tend to give back to their communities and spark new ideas.

So as a CEO of ACME, I sit down look at each of my departments and trying to figure out what are the issues ACME has in each of these departments:

• Finance: Reports are always late and has several mistakes. Also all other departments complain about finance’s lack of clarity on budget.
• HR. Seems we are hiring too many wrong people because of our low retention rate & there is no clarity on strategy of recruitment; we are keep posting jobs and having big internal recruitment team members. Also our over all employee satisfaction (measured by Culture Amp) shows several frustrations with HR.
• Trading lack of data-driven or data-informed decisions as we are keep buying and sourcing products that does not help to improve our customer satisfaction or our inventory days.
• Acquisition. Our CAC (customer acquisition cost) constantly seems too high.
• Fulfillment always late, we have constant complain from customer on delivering wrong products.
• Engineering is quite slow and does not enable other departments, I expect to be spearhead of all of my departments.
• Customer Experience handles the customer complaints but their satisfaction is not improving at all.
• Content is totally not delivering engaging contents and our content engagements on social network is declining constantly.

Step 6. Desired Culture for each department

Finance

• Current Culture: Purpose and Learning
• Desired Culture: Safety.
• Why? Based on issues as declared in step 5, we want to have predictable working environment and think things through carefully. Leaders must emphasize being realistic and planning ahead.

HR

• Current Culture: Purpose and Learning
• Desired Culture: Caring.
• Why? Based on issues as declared in step 5, we want to HR focuses on relationships and mutual trust with other department heads and among all employees. HR must foster loyalty; and HR leaders must emphasize on sincerity, teamwork, and positive relationships.

Trading

• Current Culture: Purpose and Learning
• Desired Culture: Results.
• Why? Based on issues as declared in step 5, we want our trading department is characterized by achievement and winning. Work environments are outcome-oriented and merit-based where people aspire to achieve top performance. Employees are united by a drive for capability and success; leaders emphasize goal accomplishment.

Acquisition

• Current Culture: Purpose and Learning
• Desired Culture: Results.
• Why? Based on issues as declared in step 5, we want our acquisition department is characterized by achievement and winning. Work environments are outcome-oriented and merit-based where people aspire to achieve top performance. Employees are united by a drive for capability and success; leaders emphasize goal accomplishment.

Fulfillment

• Current Culture: Purpose and Learning
• Desired Culture: Order.
• Why? Based on issues as declared in step 5, we want our acquisition department isis focused on respect, structure, and shared norms.

Engineering

• Current Culture: Purpose and Learning
• Desired Culture: Enjoyment & Results.
• Why? Based on issues as declared in step 5, we want our engineering department is fun, innovative, risk-taking, creative and outcome oriented.

Step 7. Rolling Out new culture

ACME management team need to collaborate and align on step 6. Then they can start using these tools and achieve such results by each:

1. Launching Workplace in order to foster transparency and open communication among all employees and each department or cross functional team
2. Using tools like Lattice in order to have a very clear Performance management such as well managed 1:1 meetings, setting up goals for each employee and structured performance review based feedback that is common not once or twice a year.
3. Launch tools like Workday so we can have a very detail and centralized view of all employees such as their training, compensation, benefits, payroll, reports & analytics and etc
4. Launch of greenhouse in order to improve our recruiting and integrating with culture amp so we can know what source of recruitment, which interview questions and what onboarding process helped to achieve and find a better culture fit into each of our departments.
5. Launch of Culture Amp to collect, understand and act on employee feedback. Also measure clearly our progress of each department from their current culture into designed and target culture. Measuring overall progress which can be the KPI of each department head also understanding of each employee so we can see what HR needs to do in order to help those employees to fit into the target culture.

Step 8. Repeat.

Repeat all steps, measure, learn, apply new ways and repeat again. This is called: Lean Corporate Culture Framework