Innovateculturechanges

In essence, enterprise culture is "informative, learned, knowable, measurable, modifiable, and manageable."

The definition of culture is the collective mindsets, attitudes, feelings, values, and behaviors that characterize and inform a group and its members. Every organization exhibits a culture, their subdivisions or teams exhibit subcultures. Anytime people work together for an extended period of time, a culture is formed. 

Culture is invisible, but powerful to impact all sorts of human behaviors and corporate performance. It’s the force that guides and directs how people will interact with one another and deal with those beyond their group by making certain assumptions, holding certain beliefs, in making decisions and working collectively.

Creative culture: Creativity is one of the most wanted professional qualities in the digital era. Employees should be encouraged to think out of the box, ask insightful questions, take reasonable risks, go beyond their defined roles and demonstrate their intellectual capabilities to spur innovation and drive positive changes. Besides thinking and observing, communication and participation are important to spark creativity and nurture a culture of innovation. Make sure the work environment encourages creativity and collaborative thinking, help employees discover who they are, and align their career goals with the strategic goals of the company for accelerating collective performance.

To nurture creative mindset, search for disruptive or breakthrough innovation, keep the doors open and build an inclusive working environment. Design a bigger community and co-create with people outside your customer circles or industries, to connect unusual dots for generating great ideas. Employee engagement in the innovation process increases participation and streamlines creativity flow at all levels within an organization, from top leaders to front-line employees, understanding and developing their creative capacity to solve problems, explore emerging opportunities to grow and encourage intrapreneurship activities.

“Continuous improvement” culture: Many organizations suffer from culture inertia which means people get stuck at the old way to think and do things. Culture change is difficult, as it takes time to develop a good habit for culture changes. A continuous improvement culture isn’t built in a day, it takes strategy and practices. This is accomplished by establishing strong interdependent relationships, the shared vision, optimized processes, and a set of business practices. Business value achieved by culture change management has to be driven, indicated and understood at all levels of the organization, keeps the process transparent, makes adjustments accordingly, and evaluates results by setting the right indicators and measuring them effectively.

It's much easier when continuous improvement is part of having a common and operational way to define and apply a language of work so that together you can improve things on your own and with others. It is really important for building a competitive team in which every member is always aware of how the whole process of culture change is going on, and what results have already been achieved. Culture needs to be harmonized when people cross teams, cross geographical locations, cross-functions, or cross-industries work together for solving problems collaboratively. Culture change needs to be proactive, structural, and ensure culture progress is the collaborative effort of all people who can make improvements they would like to see.

Global culture: Culture is corporate brand and footprints. Business culture is a blend of national and organizational cultures and it is the part of a unique corporate brand. Many companies across the vertical sectors are expanding at the global scope, they need to shift their reputation from local to global; adapting to a multicultural environment and leading change with cultural empathy. In fact, adapting to different cultures is now emerging as a critical success factor for global professionals working in multinational enterprises. The culture tone is set from the top; at the core of culture, it’s the leadership that impacts on individual mindset, attitude, or actions, as well as their policy setting on how people accomplish work, etc. Thus, advancing leadership disciplines and practices become an integral effort of culture change.

There is an overwhelming temptation to fiddle with cultural attributes such as values, norms, and beliefs. Different cultures have varying focus, adapting to the environment at different speeds. Culture progress is not a universal truth, but a relative truth. Explore changes and develop the business potential by taking a structural effort and pushing the limits of the available technology and resources. Still, making culture progress is the collaborative effort of all people, people are the key factor of culture change.

Culture is changeable, and the speed of culture change may also be expedited as the world becomes more hyper-connected and interdependent. Great culture encourages us to discover ourselves, do business to delight customers. It is our brand promise. In essence, enterprise culture is "informative, learned, knowable, measurable, modifiable, and manageable."

Posted in: culture Master