The Winning Culture

The purpose of this blog is to examine organizational cultures and determine which is the best for the organization.  There are four cultures, Autocratic, Bureaucratic, Collaborative, and Decentralized. Nothing is 100%.  No one organization is all of one type the same as an individual is not all the same personality style. But, that being said, most smaller entrepreneurial cultures are autocratic, governments and large regulated organizations tend to be bureaucratic, modern organizations that work hard to work in teams tend to be collaborative, and many smaller professional firms are individual.  When we correlate with success we see that overall the collaborative culture tends to be the most successful. That is, with success being defined as meeting its objectives in a productive fashion.  They serve the customer better and they do it more efficiently.  

Comments

[Pim A.]

my question is how do we get a group of people working for one goal? we know that it is an 'incentive' that encourages people to behave in a certain way but how do we know how to provide the right incentive to each member of the team?

[Art Pulis]

Pim, It's actually a lot easier than we think. The key is to have the team agree together on the mission, vision, and core values of the team. When they have had a chance to set those three things, or have agreed on them as they have come onto the team, then they are moving in the same direction. The primary incentive they have for behaving in this way is that that they have been a part of the planning. That's probably the biggest difference between the bureaucratic culture that doesn't allow team members much say in decisions, and the collaborative culture that encourages people to interact with management and have a lot more say in decisions.
Thanks for your comment

[Pim A.]

The concept is totally making sense. However, I still don't see clearly how that'd actually work in the real world where not only business/economic profits are involved, each individual has his/her own personal goal as well...how would we fit those with the mission/vision/value of a company?

[Art Pulis]

In the real world there are many things involved other than business/economic profits. The key is to get and hold employees who align their personal goals with those of the organization. Then there is far less conflict. In the old manufacturing (bureaucratic) culture it is assumed that labor's goals are opposite those of management. In the new culture and new type organization, both labor and management work toward the same goals. If you study the most successful organizations today you will see this collaborative culture working. True, not in all cases. Nothing is 100%. But, the more the level of collaboration, the more successful the organization.