The Culture of Business

Organizational culture and management

Culture Management is the process of cultivating and scaling work culture inside an organization. This includes keeping a pulse on the many aspects of the organization’s culture while measuring the impact of the culture on morale and productivity.

Culture managers, like Chief People Officers, are focused on establishing a work environment that helps people contribute and collaborate at their full potential. This means developing an organizational culture that creates a great place for people to work together. The benefit to the business in cultivating a great work culture is sustained, high performance by the people working in the organization.

Who manages culture inside a company?

Culture managers come by many names. Titles include Chief Culture Officer, Chief People Officer; Vice President of Culture; Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; and Head of Employee Experience to name a few. This is a relatively new role as companies realize that investing in culture returns significant financial impact (ROI). Often in smaller organizations this isn’t a full time role, but rather a responsibility of the Human Resource (HR) team.

Regardless of the title or role, the activity of culture management sits at the intersection of the entire organization. A great corporate culture influences (and is influenced by) the company’s leadership, company’s goals and strategy, HR, IT… even the design of the office or remote setup. This role has a huge impact on the bottom line of the business. And if a growing company isn’t being strategic about cultivating organizational behavior, it’s a huge red flag signaling risk for long term success.

How do you plan culture management?

An easy litmus test to gauge the true character of the company culture is to survey employees about how long it takes decision-making to occur. A workplace culture with slow decision-making, requiring many inputs and approvals, is a sign of poor management style, low risk taking, antiquated organizational structure, and a low-autonomy work environment. In other words, not a culture that will scale or endure.

The micro-moments are the interactions between employees. Every chat, every exchange, every email, every meeting: these interactions between employees establish and reinforce the overall cultural values.

Different cultures breed different employee experiences. There’s no standard set of organizational values to adopt. Yet the cultural elements and management processes should all signal the expected behavior inside each employee interaction.

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