Editorial On Culture

This is an article that I wrote for my company's newsletter. It was published as the editorial for the November 2005 edition.

"By culture we mean all those historically created designs for living, explicit and implicit, rational, irrational, and non rational, which exist at any given time as potential guides for the behavior of men" -- Kluckhohn & Kelly in the book 'The Science of Man in the World Culture'.

The roots for the evolution of a culture could be traced back to the evolution of the human race itself. Culture, when applied to companies, educational institutions & universities form the organizational culture. When we talk about organizational culture, it can be described as the shared set of values, goals, behaviors & beliefs of the people working in an organization that get exhibited in their day-to-day working style.

With studies indicating a strong relationship between the culture of an organization & its success, it becomes imperative for people leading organizations to pay close attention to the culture that exists in their organization and on ways to improving it. The steps that can be taken for making the shift towards a culture that would lead to high productivity include

(1)Gauging the culture that exists presently in the organization
(2)Having a clear idea of what the culture of the organization should be in the future
(3)Taking a positive step towards that cultural change

The culture that exists in Chrysler & British Airways (BA), the cultural change programs that these companies introduced to bring about the present culture serves as a case in point for the importance of culture for an organization, its relevance to the organization's growth & the growth of its people.

Chrysler of the 90's, for example, had a bad reputation for customer service & press relations. The company was incurring huge losses & its market share was falling drastically. Bob Lutz, the president of Chrysler at the time of this crisis, had a vision of making Chrysler the technology leader in the cars & trucks segment. He introduced a cultural change program called as 'Customer One' to enable Chrysler to move towards his vision. The basic areas in which the 'Customer One' change program focused on are: involvement of people, agreeing on objectives, learning & emphasis on quality. This cultural change brought about results that were astounding by any yardstick. Chrysler's stock value increased by close to four times & it had moved from an organization on the verge of bankruptcy to a profitable organization.

Cultural changes take a long time to sink in & the transitions are difficult. But the fruits of the change are very significant. The culture that a person imbibes from the organization and his individual culture are so closely interwoven that the manifestations of one is noticed in the other.