Harvard business review articles pdf

With authors from Michael E. Porter to Katrina Lake and company examples from Alibaba to 3M, this volume brings the most current and important. For its reissue as a Classic, the Har-vard Business Review asked Stephen R. Covey to provide a commentary. Strategy and culture are among the primary levers at top leaders disposal in their never-ending quest to maintain organizational viability and effectiveness. Strategy offers a formal logic for the companys goals and orients people around them.

See full list on hbr. For better and worse, culture and leadership are inextricably linked. Founders and influential leaders often set new cultures in motion and imprint values and assumptions that persist for decades. Over time an organizations leaders can also shape culture, through both conscious and unconscious actions (sometimes with unintended consequences). The best leaders we have observed are fully aware of the multiple cultures within which they are embedde can sense when change is require and can deftly influence the process.

Unfortunately, in our experience it is far more common for leaders seeking to build high-performing organizations to be confounded by culture. Indee many either let it go unmanaged or relegate it to the HR function, where it becomes a secondary concern for the business. They may lay out detaile thoughtful plans for strategy and execution, but because they dont understand cultures power and dynamics, their plans go off the rails.

As someone once sai culture eats strategy for breakfast. It doesnt have to be that way. Our work suggests that culture can, in fact, be managed. The first and most important step leaders can take to maximize its value and minimize its risks is to become fully aware of how it works.

By integrating findings from more than 1of the most commonly used social and behavioral models, we have identified eight styles that distinguish a culture and can be measured. We gratefully acknowledge the rich history of cultural studiesgoing all the way back to the earliest explorations of human natureon which our work builds. Using this framework, leaders can model the impact of culture on their business and assess its alignment with strategy. We also suggest how culture can help them achieve change and build organizations that thrive in even the most trying times.

When properly aligned with personal values, drives, and needs, culture can unleash tremendous amounts of energy toward a shared purpose and foster an organizations capacity to thrive. Whereas strategy is typically determined by the C-suite, culture can fluidly blend the intentions of top leaders with the knowledge and experiences of frontline employees. These eight styles fit into our integrated culture framework according to the degree to which they reflect independence or interdependence (people interactions) and flexibility or stability (response to change). Styles that are adjacent in the framework, such as safety and order, frequently coexist within organizations and their people.

In contrast, styles that are located across from each other, such as safety and learning, are less likely to be found together and require more organizational energy to maintain simultaneously. Each style has advantages and disadvantages, and no style is inherently better than another. An organizational culture can be defined by the absolute and relative strengths of each of the eight and by the degree of employee agreement about which styles characterize the organization. A powerful feature of this framework, which differentiates it from other models, is that it can also be used to define individuals styles and the values of leaders and employees.

The academic literature on the subject is vast. Our review of it revealed many formal definitions of organizational culture and a variety of models and methods for assessing it. Numerous processes exist for creating and changing it.

It cannot exist solely within a single person, nor is it simply the average of individual characteristics. It resides in shared behaviors, values, and assumptions and is most commonly experienced through the norms and expectations of a groupthat is, the unwritten rules. Other aspects of culture are unseen, such as mindsets, motivations, unspoken assumptions, and what David Rooke and William Torbert refer to as action logics (mental models of how to interpret and respond to the world around you).

An organizations orientation toward people interactions and coordination will fall on a spectrum from highly independent to highly interdependent. Culture is a group phenomenon. Those that lean toward the latter emphasize integration, managing relationships, and coordinating group effort.

People in such cultures tend to collaborate and to see success through the lens of the group. Learning is characterized by exploration, expansiveness, and creativity. Work environments are inventive and open-minded places where people spark new ideas and explore alternatives.

Enjoyment is expressed through fun and excitement. Safety is defined by planning, caution, and preparedness. Inherent in the framework are fundamental trade-offs. Although each style can be beneficial, natural constraints and competing demands force difficult choices about which values to emphasize and how people are expected to behave.

It is common to find organizations with cultures that emphasize both and caring, but this combination can be confusing to employees. Are they expected to optimize individual goals and strive for outcomes at all costs, or should they work as a team and emphasize collaboration and shared success? The nature of the work itself, the business strategy, or the design of the organization may make it difficult for employees to be equally focused and caring. In contrast, a culture that emphasizes caring and order encourages a work environment in which teamwork, trust, and respect are paramount.

The two styles are mutually reinforcing, which can be beneficial but can also present challenges. The benefits are strong loyalty, retention of talent, lack of conflict, and high levels of engagement. The challenges are a tendency toward groupthink, reliance on consensus-based decisions, avoidance of difficult issues, and a calcified sense of us versus them.

Leaders who are more focused on and learning may find the combination of caring and order stifling when they seek to drive entrepreneurship and change. Savvy leaders make use of existing cultural strengths and have a nuanced understanding of how to initiate change. They might rely on the participative nature of a culture focused on caring and order to engage team members and simultaneously identify a learning-oriented insider who has the trust of his or her peers to advocate for change through relationship networks. The eight styles can be used to diagnose and describe highly complex and diverse behavioral patterns in a culture and to model how likely an individual leader is to align with and shape that culture. What worked in the past may no longer work in the future, and what worked for one company may not work for another.

Consider the case of a best-in-class retailer headquartered in the United States. The company had viewed its first priority as providing top-notch customer service. It accomplished this with a simple ruleDo right by the customerthat encouraged employees to use their judgment when providing service. A core HR training practice was to help every salesperson see customer interactions as an opportunity to create service stories that become legendary. Employees were reminded to define service from the customers perspective, to constantly engage customers with questions geared toward understanding their specific needs and preferences, and to go beyond their expectations.

For example, senior leaders from two merging international food retailers had invested heavily in their organizations cultures and wanted to preserve their unique strengths and distinct heritages. An assessment of the cultures revealed shared values and areas of compatibility that could provide a foundation for the combined culture, along with important differences for which leaders would have to plan: Both companies emphasized , caring, and order and valued high-quality foo good service, treating employees fairly, and maintaining a local mindset. But one operated in a more top-down manner and scored much higher on authority, especially in the behavior of leaders. Consider one Silicon Valleybased technology company we worked with. Though it had built a strong business and invested in unique technology and top engineering talent, its revenue growth was starting to decline as newer, nimbler competitors made strides in a field exploding with innovation and business model disruption.

Company leaders viewed the culture as a differentiator for the business and decided to diagnose, strengthen, and evolve it. We found a culture that was intensely focuse team based (caring), and exploratory (a combination of enjoyment and learning). In measuring the culture of this company, we found that like many other large retailers, it was characterized primarily by a combination of and caring. Unlike many other retailers, however, it had a culture that was also very flexible, learning oriente and focused on purpose. As one top executive explaine We have freedom as long as we take good care of the customer.

Three external candidates emerged: one who was aligned with the current culture (purpose), one who would be a risk taker and innovative (learning), and one who was hard-driving and competitive (authority). After considerable deliberation, the board chose the highly competitive leader with the authority style. Soon afterward an activist investor attempted a hostile takeover, and the new CEO was able to navigate through the precarious situation, keep the company independent, and simultaneously begin to restructure in preparation for growth. Because both companies valued teamwork and investments in the local community, the leaders prioritized caring and purpose.

At the same time, their strategy required that they shift from top-down authority to a learning style that would encourage innovation in new-store formats and online retailing. As one senior leader said of the strategic aspiration, We need to dare to do things differently, not play by the old rule books. The CEO introduced new leadership development and team coaching programs and training opportunities that would help leaders feel more comfortable with cultural evolution. When people departe the company carefully selected new leaders who would provide supporting values, such as caring, and increased the emphasis on a shared purpose. The benefits of this strategic and cultural shift took the form of an increasingly diverse array of integrated service offerings and strong growth, particularly in emerging markets.

Unlike developing and executing a business plan, changing a companys culture is inextricable from the emotional and social dynamics of people in the organization. Access valuable online archives - over years of business and management articles. Online Courses From Harvard. Browse Courses in Different Subjects. Harnessing the Science of Persuasion Robert B. Indee deciphering what motivates us as human beings is a centuries-old puzzle.

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Many managers feel overwhelmed. All too often, they say, they find themselves running out of time while their subordinates are running out of work. Such is the common phenomenon described by the late William Oncken, Jr.

They tell the engaging story of an overburdened manager who has.