PARANOIA+PASSION+POINTS OF INFLECTION = DISRUPTIVE GROWTH

                   ORGANIZATIONS SOAR WHEN THEY FIND THEIR STRIDE

                                                                  Lead to 

Successful organizations discover their fortune through perseverance, paranoia & passion, leading to continuous innovation, execution excellence. They consistently stay ahead of their competition by riding the points of inflection..

There is a fortune waiting behind the door for every organization   borne with a purpose in mind                   

                                                              

Organizations have to strive to find the right key to the door to their fortune of their life time.. Master Mentors..

Look around and we find thousands of organizations struggling to survive as they are unable to make profit despite investing lot of resources and toiling hard. They are termed as ‘Busy Fools’ who work hard only to make losses or at best, no money. They are unable to serve the stakeholders, employees and the society. On the other hand, we come across incredibly successful organizations that have hit the sweet spots in their business, again and again, leading to consistent growth and prosperity.

"Only the Paranoid Survive", quoted Andrew S. Grove, one of the Intel's founders and a legendary CEO.Intel is one of the most successful and ever growing companies of our times, which rode the points of inflection consistently in its growth curve, continuously reinventing itself, to be in tune with the customers’ needs and leading the industry standards with more and more powerful processors.

In his book ‘Only the Paranoid Survive’, Andrew Grove discussed the concept of ‘Strategic Inflexion Point’ . “An inflection point occurs where the old strategic picture dissolves and gives way to the new“, he said. 

   

"There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance. Miss that moment, and you start to decline."   Andy Grove, Intel CEO.

While it is never easy to find this inflection point and most of the companies are often blind sighted by this, the best companies are forever paranoid and are continuously innovating to keep themselves  ahead of the curve.


Some of the companies that dominated the world by riding the waves created by the inflection points through innovation, determination and passion in the recent history are:

Google-  With its Search related products and services to capitalize on the rising  need for 'Information services’,

Apple – With  iPod, iPhone and the iPad to capture the mobile consumers,

Dell- Customized products to cater to the value for money conscious empowered customers,

RIM- Black Berry phones for mobile enterprise customers,

Amazon – E-commerce and Cloud computing platform  to capture the sweeping changes in the service oriented architecture space,

FaceBook, Linkedin and Twitter-  Social media platforms to enable today’s generation to express themselves,  leverage their social networks,  stay connected , share and validate experiences,

Nokia – Telecom revolution with value for money feature ridden handsets for brand conscious consumers,

Samsung- With feature rich experience phones with multimedia experience etc.

It is important to note that some of the companies are unable to keep in tune with the fast changing market landscapes and are falling by the wayside losing their market share quickly.

Nokia, Motorola, RIM, Myspace, Orkut face trying situations to keep up their market shares as they miss the inflection points again and again.

          

While Nokia led the mobile market in its early stages and RIM made big headway in the application space, both of them are seen to be missing the bus in the era of  ‘experience’ while Apple and Samsung are leading the pack. 
Apple and Samsung have been continuously unleashing cutting edge innovation to keep in tune with the multiple points of inflection occurring at smaller and smaller intervals.

Organizations which are driven by passionate promoters, filled with employees who passionately lead the organization through the many curves of growth, take advantage of the points of inflection as they keep occurring. Such organizations are filled with competent professionals with positive attitude, purposefully and passionately driven towards a common vision with high motivation, leading to exceptional results consistently.

Apple Inc, Google, Microsoft, Dell, General Electric, Facebook are some such companies in the living history led by great promoters who have demonstrated an organization wide Paranoia along with Passion, infectious across the organizations which enabled them to conquer the Points of Inflection and take their organizations through phases of disruptive growth. 
Companies like Polaroid, Xerox, Sega, Myspace, Orkut, Hindustan Motors, Kodak, Sony, Motorola are some of the numerous companies that have either lost their edge or got the soil under their feet completely washed off due to the tsunami caused by the points of inflection that occurred due to changing market places or disruptive innovations.

While there are Pots of Gold existing for thriving companies to  explore and exploit, it is imperative for the successful companies to innovate and persistently try to find the keys to unlock the doors to their fortune.

THRIVING IN THE FACE OF COMPETITION..

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs. Henry Ford

                         

Competition is considered as a compelling reason for organizations to continuously reinvent themselves and be on their toes. While competition is considered as a threat to their existence by most of the companies, the really successful organizations view it as a challenge an opportunity that drives them to continuously innovate, reinvent themselves, improve and grow over time

Emergence of new Competition for any product or service could be seen as an endorsement of the attractiveness of the market and an opportunity to grow the demand by investing together to educate the customers and offer better and better features.

By staying competitive and through constructive approach, smart organizations try to garner higher and higher share of the market.

In India, Hero Honda started offering a range of 100cc Bikes in 1985, the two wheeler market was largely dominated by Bajaj Auto with its traditional scooters. As the market for the 100cc bikes, which happened to be a disruptive innovation at that time, with a far superior mileage to the existing competition,  Bajaj took  little time in responding to the challenge.

In 1986, Bajaj Auto launched a range of motorcycles and fought fiercely with the fast emerging blue chip company, Hero Honda Ltd.. While a number of other companies who got into the two wheeler market perished along the way, Bajaj Auto managed to survive the competition and grew to an annual revenue of over US$3.5 Billion as seen today.

Over the last decade, the company has successfully changed its image from a scooter manufacturer to a two-wheeler manufacturer. Its product range encompasses scooterettes, scooters and motorcycles. Its real growth in numbers has come in the last four years after successful introduction of a few models in the motorcycle segment

Together, Bajaj, TVS Motor and Hero Motors (formerly Hero Honda) have grown the Indian market for 100cc Bikes to over US$10 Billion in the past 28 years from almost nil levels.

Fierce competitive spirit in the market place leads to continuous improvement of the features and improved value for money for the consumer due to the efforts of the organizations to be the preferred vendor.

Rise of Bharti Airtel as a global organisation despite being faced with disruptive price competition from Reliance communication during the past 10 years is another classic example of a great organization .

While a number of organizations have perished being unable to cope up with the competition, the successful companies display the following traits:

A)     Monitoring competition- Continuously study the competition and strive to keep ahead of them with distinctive and unique selling propositions. Look for opportunities to learn and replicate/surpass in the good features and avoid mistakes done by the competition. Monitoring the competition will allow the company to study the response of others to similar environment and hence will help in evolving the right response.

Various online and offline sources like websites, news reports, annual reports, report by funds, advertisements for products and people, patent applications, market surveys are used to monitor the competition. Schemes, New product launches , Pricing movements  Production reports, Demand and Inventory reports are continuously  monitored by the market intelligence wings in successful organizations.

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B)      Watch out & Respond to New developments- Look for disruptive innovations or competition from alternate product/service- markets that could evolve as an opportunity to compete it in or as potential competitors. A number of times most dangerous competition stems from new companies that have worked in stealth mode. Successful companies use brute force to dominate such market, stifle growth of such companies or sometimes buy out the competition.

For example, Nirma was a classic example in the Indian scenario which as a new entrant into the detergent market gave tough time to the market leader with disruptive innovation in product/pricing/packaging w.r.t  Hindustan lever’s Surf.

Very often innovation in the form institutional disruption and country disruptions seep the companies off their feet if the threats are not proactively handled.

C)      Co-exisiting with competitor as Partners –

Constructive approach to competition has helped companies evolve new markets together with joint investments in setting uniform standards necessary for productive use of resources, share  capital resources required for product development, distribution etc while making operations more profitable and viable leading to a higher net addition of economic value.
Apple Computer's decision to use Intel's processors and also 'Windows Operating System' in a dual mode in its personal computers in 2004-2005 lead to a dramatic growth in the sale of its PCs and gave a new growth curve to its business.

Mark Cataldo, Chairman of the Board of the Open Mobile Alliance, a network of leading telecom companies in the world announced "The Open Mobile Alliance is very pleased that our organisations have come together to address this key technology area. By cooperating, our organisations, OMA's service enablers and APIs will enrich the support of multimedia services across the rapidly diversifying range of devices."

http://news.yahoo.com/major-standards-organisations-cooperate-drive-development-home-environment-125007624.html

This is a great example of the cooperation among competitors to evolve industry standards. Similarly, the cooperation between the Indian cellular companies to hare cell tower infrastructure by forming joint venture companies is another classic example of co-opetition (cooperation between competitors). Formation of CIBIL by financial services companies in India is another classic case of competitors coming together to share information to help in credit rating verification of their applicants to reduce delinquancies and Non Performing Assets, thus improving their performance.

Today’s successful companies have a clear constructive approach that enables them to leverage competiton for business growth than be intimidated by them and be insecure. This is the hallmark of thriving organisations.

SUSTAINABLE GROWTH- THE 3BL APPROACH

“Every action you take in business has two components: an impact on profits and an impact on the world” Quote from Triple Bottom Line by Andrew W Savitz and Karl Weber.

                           Image courtesy of Sustainability Partnership International

               

Triple Bottomline, abbreviated as TBL or 3BL, and also known as people (fair and equitable HR practices , planet (sustainable environmental practices) , profit (economic value creation)   captures an expanded spectrum of values and criteria for measuring, assessing and reporting the  economic, environmental and social success of organizations, corporations, projects or processes.

With the environmental degradation caused by the irreversible use of natural resources causing serious threat to the long term viability of the planet, the net contribution of the carbon foot print is becoming an important measure of the corporate’s responsible approach to the survival of the planet and passing on a better life to our younger generations.

Companies with focus on Triple Bottom Line understand that business success is not just measured by financial performance but also by the impact on the overall society.

A TBL focussed company aims to limit the economic damage caused by the processes it undertakes to produce & deliver and also undertake to take necessary activities through the lifecycle of its products, services to minimize their carbon footprint.

Recycling of waste, use of renewable resources, conservation of natural resources, discouraging over exploitation of natural resources, reduction of consumption of products and services that lead to excess creation of environmentally hazardous waste, treatment of hazardous waste generated by them  etc. are some of the activities necessarily undertaken by companies focussed on Long term Sustainability.

Correspondingly the leading companies across the world now proactively disclose in their annual reports, the various steps and standing across various metrics relating to the company’s efforts for a sustainable environment.

While it involves higher expenses and investments for organisations to follow such admirable processes, they indeed payoff in the long run as,

i)                    Consumers across the globe are increasingly patronising products and services of those organizations which are demonstrating their commitment to the environmental preservation,

ii)                  Investors give higher valuation to companies committed to sustained development &

iii)                It is also financially remunerative to be a negative carbon foot print company due to government subsidies, incentives and profits on sale of Carbon credits.

Some of the actions taken by the world’s leading companies

Hewlett Packard- HP owns and opens enormous “e-waste” recycling plants that shred discarded, obsolete computer products into raw materials that can be recycled into the industrial food chain. HP has also agreed to take back computer equipment of all brands, and has taken steps to ensure that its own products are 100% recyclable in the manner discussed above.

TESCO:  This British grocery chain has enlisted its customer base in the fight to go green by offering savings to shoppers who bring reusable shopping bags to their stores. The company has also turned each of its stores into wind-powered, high-recycling, biodiesel truck delivered epicenters of environmental sustainability, running at such high efficiency Ralph Nader would be beside himself. In another major breakthrough, Tesco is aiming to estimate the “carbon costs” of each item it sells.

Bank of America:  Internal recycling paper of over 30000 tonnes, incentivising employees to buy hybrid vehicles.

Starbucks :  With the company’s decision to use coffee cup sleeves made of recycled paper saving over a lakh trees per year,  Starbucks has also partnered up with many environmental organizations, from Conservation International to the Earthwatch Institute, in efforts to do right by the communities it operates in.

Walmart:  Committed to using its waste-eliminating corporate philosophy to make its own operations more eco-friendly; launched an ambitious longterm plan to eventually power each of its stores use 100% renewable energy sources.

Coca-cola: Coca-Cola has narrowed down 3 environmental goals on which to focus their efforts: waterstewardship, sustainable packaging, and climate & energy protection. Each of these initiatives is detailed and explained at their corporate website. Involved in community recycling programs and a complete, sustainability-focused overhaul of its packaging designs.

Dell: Through its “no computer should go to waste” recycling program, Dell allows customers to return any Dell-branded product back to the company – for free. The company has even gone so far as to establish programs that accept computers, monitors, or printers from other companies for safe disposal, as well.

In India companies like Wipro, ITC Group,  HCL Technologies, HDFC Bank, Suzlon, Hero Motors, Idea Cellular etc, are leading the group of 3BL focussed organizations working towards a sustainable environment.
Many of these companies are undertaking humongous constructions to house their ever grwoing staff. To ensure that they are following environmentally friendly practicses, these companies follow the guidelines laid out by the LEED Rating system.

Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), and spearheaded by Robert K. Watson, Founding Chairman LEED Steering Committee from 1995 until 2006, LEED ( Leadership in energy and environmental design) is intended to provide building owners and operators a concise framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.

LEED 2009 is a third party certification system and a suite of rating system to assess the environmental impact of constructions. LEED-India Green Building Rating System is a nationally and internationally accepted benchmark for design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings

In LEED 2009 there are 100 possible base points distributed across five major credit categories: Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, Indoor Environmental Quality, plus an additional 6 points for Innovation in Design and an additional 4 points for Regional Priority. Buildings can qualify for four levels of certification:

• Certified: 40–49 points
• Silver: 50–59 points
• Gold: 60–79 points
• Platinum: 80 points and above

The LEED for Homes rating system is different from LEED v3, with different point categories and thresholds that reward efficient residential design.

Points  "based on the potential environmental impacts and human benefits of each credit." are distributed across major credit categories such as Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, and Indoor Environmental Quality.

Infosys which has undertaken some of the largest constructions in India, consistently achieved the level of 'Pllatinum ratings' for its buildings by Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) .Infosys has over 3 buildings with a  building area of 780,000 sq ft, as  Platinum rated.  

These are just some of the many cases of globally admired and eminently successful organizations leading the movement towards a sustainable environment.

Switching to 'Renewables' generates jobs, skills, purpose, power, wealth, future, resilience, autonomy, freedom, unity: Sustainable Society - Dave Hampton, Carbon Coach 

CONSUMER-CENTRICITY NOT JUST CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY !- 3 C -APPROACH

Focus on the user and all else will follow - Google  

                                                

                1:  Company  2: Customer  3. Consumer/User at the centre of the universe

                                               

If there is only one thing that could create, sustain and grow businesses, then that is the focus on the Customer and the Customers of your customers (consumers).

The  purpose of any business is to serve its customers ‘profitably’ and its survival is dependent on the amount of money its customers pay or will lead to others pay to the business versus its investments.

Providing the best value to the customers with respect to all the alternatives that the customer has for his money should be the single most aim of any business.

The maximum size of any business is equal to the collective wallet size / ability to pay off all the customers in the target market.

‘You can grow as far as the credit limit of all your potential customers takes you..’

For example:

Potential Market opportunity could be calculated for different companies could be as follows:

Real estate company-   Collective Credit limit of all  the potential house buyers in its target market

Personal Computers-   Collective value of the IT hardware budgets of all targeted entities.

Advertising Agency:  Share of the Collective value of the advertising budgets of all the Advertisers

Hotel-      Collective value of the amount spent on food of all the target customers

What is important to note is that, the Revenue potential of any organization is directly proportional to:

  Market share * Purchasing power of all the potential  customers * Share of wallet of the category of products to the overall purchasing power * Proportion of the share of target customers to overall size of the  Potential customers base .

Hence for any business to succeed, it should start from the ability of the customers to pay and what it has to do to get the maximum share of this capability. It is very important to mind the potential growth or de-growth of the target customer base and the share of the wallet as the company evaluates its areas of focus for investment. The companies which have the ability to address global markets with relatively lower costs and ease are the ones which can become the biggest organisations in the fastest way. For example, Google, Apple, Facebook etc have reached

The secret behind the successes of today’s rapidly growing organization is the ability to identify huge potential target customer base that is rapidly growing and provide the best possible product or serve that offers the most  ‘Value for money’ and thus address the ‘WIIFM’ questions best among the alternatives available and is also communicated well to the target audience.

Its important to understand the different types & levels of customers that an organization caters to:

While Brands and organizations are dependent on their customers for their revenue, these customers are in-turn dependant on their customers who may be the ultimate consumers or users of the company’s products and services.

                    

In the above picture, the moon could be represented by the company, while the earth could be represented by the customers and the ultimate resource for money in return for the product or service (consumer) could represent the sun.

Consumer Brand (RayBan) : While RayBan sunglasses are manufactured by Luxottica Group, Italy, it reaches its target consumers through a network of dealers and distributors. While the dealer of RayBan is the customer of the organization, the user of the product is the consumer.

Hence Luxottica should ensure that both its customers are happy to deal with the brand through better policies, margins etc and the consumers are a growing clan of proud and satisfied users of the brand. Focus on building a better proposition to its ultimate consumers will lead to better business and profitability for its trade partners as well.

Google:  Google believes in offering the businesses the best tools on the web to succeed on and off the web. Google derives its money from the organizations who advertise on the web and from those who use its tolls for improving their productivity. These customers are further dependent on their consumers for their success and  want to promote their services to their consumers in the most attractive manner, helping them in satisfying their needs and earn a share of their wallet. These consumers are the users of Google’s services, which are mostly free.

Hence Google focuses on serving its users and making them swear by its products and services thus becoming a bigger and bigger clan, which in turn leads to higher and higher value for those who pay for its services, the customers.

Brand Ambassador ( Sachin Tendulkar) : Sachin Tendulkar also known as the God of Cricket, the most popular sport in India, derives his money from the fee paid by the cricket boards for playing and also through various endorsements and promotional activities as a Brand Ambassador. These activities are aimed at helping his clients, media channels to get much bigger wallet of their consumers that will lead to their success. As long as these consumers of his clients are a growing and happy clan, these organisations will be happy to pay higher and higher amounts to their Brand Ambassador. As long as the Brand Ambassador  is delivering on his core activity that attracts the consumer through success and excellent behaviour on and off the field, the clients have a higher and better chance to succeed. This will result in the Brand Ambassador obtaining more and more revenue.

Thus it is important to see that the ‘Customer Centricity’ has to work hand in hand with ‘Consumer centricity’,  underlying the need to serve the consumers of the Customers better and better apart from making it easy for the direct customers deal smoothly and easily with the organization. While most of the organizations deal with Businesses or Individuals/ groups of individuals leading to B2B or B2C type of businesses, within the organizations every department has to deal with Internal Customers .

 An internal customer is "anyone you count on or rely upon to complete a task or a function or to provide you with information so that you can get your job done…and anyone who counts on you to complete a task or function or to provide them with information so that they can get their job done".--Rosenberger, 1998

For example,   HR department provides manpower, training and motivational programs for the rest of the organisation and the Marketing department provides internal  communication program and forecast to production department along  with  demand generation activities aimed at increasing the business.

Customer-centric organizations value and respect internal customers as much as external customers. Successful Organisations are not just focussed on being External Customer and  Consumer Centric, but also ensure that this is internalised in all the areas at all levels of the operation within the organization as well.

INNOVATION AND MARKETING- THE CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR TODAY’S ORGANIZATIONS

"Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation.

“Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." – Peter Drucker


We are living in an ever changing and ever evolving world. Only those organisations survive, that have continuously adapted themselves to this change and have consistently reinvented themselves to be in vogue with the times.

This is possible through a process of innovation that leads to disruptive products, services and processes.

 There was a time when we used to communicate through post  and travel in animal pulled carts.

"Electricity and Internet, products of some of the greatest innovative minds, are two earthshaking inventions that have changed the life of human beings on this planet earth".

Today, we communicate through instant mails, video chats on mobile devices and travel in high speed motored vehicles.

Whatever happened to the ubiquitous Ambassador car and the once favorite Bajaj Scooter on the Indian roads?!

           

                          

The never changing design of the ambassador car & Premier Padmini has led to the downfall of once an undisputed market leader the Hindustan Motors & Premier, while companies like Maruti, Tata Motors, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai continuously innovated and came out with new products to stay with the times and continue on their growth path.

                                       

     Maruthi Suzuki - in 1980s                                                               Maruthi Suzuki- 2012

While there are many examples of continuous innovations that could be given, the continuous evolution of a classic brand has led to its  survival and continuous growth over the years, despite strong competition that has marked its domain.Successful organisations have continuous stream of new products with old products continuously phased out to give way to the new ones.

Intel, Microsoft, Samsung and Apple are famous examples of organizations that consistently come out with superior products through innovation and replace the old products with newer products and newer versions.

New Products provide the Lifeline for the organisations and Innovation provides the Oxygen..

New Product development is not the only area in Marketing that is affected by innovation.
While Google encourages every employee to think about new ideas one day every week, Starbuck's CEO pushed all his key managers to come out with new ideas to recreate customer experience. Steve Jobs, the immortal ex- CEO of Apple Inc known as the most innovative technologist on the planet  commissioned , 'The Crazy Ones' a video that features Einstein, Edison, Branson  who changed the world with their thoughts, to commission his 'Think Different Campaign'.
3M is one of the most innovation driven companies in the world that inspired a number of successful companies to monitor the contribution of new products and services to the annual sales. Successful organizations continuously look for opportunities to cannibalise old and outdated products, replacing them with far superior products in line with the customers' changing tastes or sometimes, even lead the change.
Innovation can dramatically effect every aspect of marketing .

For example:

Digital Marketing has allowed tremendous innovation in targeting customers leading to amazing increase in the productivity of marketing budgets.

Market research is conducted by Media, agencies and organizations themselves by using mobile  applications, sms forms and interactive TV and web based services unlike person to person interviews earlier.

Product and service level innovations have led to customized products and services based on individual tastes. Dell allows its customers to configure their computers while textile companies allow their companies to choose their designs and fittings based on individual tastes.

Pricing innovations have allowed the companies to offer tailor made pricing, bid their prices,

Innovation in advertising systems has allowed advertisers to choose their target audience, daily budgets and bidding rates while publicity can be done by directly updating the media through web.

Innovation in supply chain coupled with collection methods from customers for products has allowed extensive use of direct to home delivery and a rapid growth of e-commerce business in India.

Innovation in packaging has helped in longer shelf lives of perishable goods and flexible product propositions to customers.
Innovations in creating new stories, music, production techniques, use of multimedia technology, 3D technology etc. have kept the cinema audience continuously entertained and growing a trillion dollar  industry across the globe. Bollywood and the rest of Indian cinema industry creates hundreds of movies and thousands of unique songs that drive the Indian public to the cinema theatres resulting in an ever-growing entertainment industry in India.

It is imperative for today’s marketers to keep their product propositions attractive, interesting and continuously relevant to the ever changing tastes and profiles of target audience through innovation in their marketing, strategies and tactics.


According to Tom Post, Forbes Magazine ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/tompost/2011/07/20/the-most-innovative-companies-today-and-tomorrow/ ), 

'Anyone can change his behavior to improve creative impact and to weave the code for innovation into his or her company.

We call them the five skills of disruptive innovators:

• Questioning allows innovators to challenge the status quo and consider new possibilities;
• Observing helps innovators detect small details—in the activities of customers, suppliers and other companies—that suggest new ways of doing things
• Networking permits innovators to gain radically different perspectives from individuals with diverse backgrounds;
• Experimenting prompts innovators to relentlessly try out new experiences, take things apart and test new ideas;
• Associational thinking—drawing connections among questions, problems or ideas from unrelated fields—is triggered by questioning, observing, networking and experimenting and is the catalyst for creative ideas.'

Behind every organization’s success is an outstanding culture of innovation and a great marketing effort. Such Organizations will continuously stay ahead of their competition and will keep growing forever.

CULTURE- THE PERSONALITY THAT DEFINES AN ORGANIZATION

                 You can go as far as your culture takes you…

                            (Pic. courtesy http://www.nhorizons.ca/en-change-culture-change )

Organizations that have been most successful in recent times are those which have recognised the importance of creating an empowering, ethical, success driven, balanced work cultures and implemented this across their entities.

Culture impacts the way an organization is perceived in the eyes of its stake holders, employees and the external environment and has a huge bearing on the valuation of companies as well.

Google, Tatas, Birlas, Godrej, TVS Group, Reliance, Infosys, HDFC, ICICI, Wipro, Apple etc are classic examples of companies that stand for well defined corporate culture that reflects in the form of a vision that they create in our minds.

The Organizational culture is one of the major factors that influences the ratings of the organizations among the best places to work for or study at etc..

When most of the employers interview potential employees, the most critical thing they try to assess is whether the employee fits well into their organizational culture.

A number of times, wrong selections are made due to the lack of this very understanding. For example, having an individualistic and an introvert person in a team oriented or an autocratic boss in a participative decision making environment lead to divergence and disharmony at work places. It has been seen that brilliant employees get fired just because they were more focussed on their own achievements instead of taking their teams along with them.

 What is Organizational Culture ?

 Ravasi and Schultz (2006) state that organizational culture is a set of shared mental assumptions that guide interpretation and action in organizations by defining appropriate behavior for various situations. At the same time, although a company may have "own unique culture", in larger organizations, there are diverse and sometimes conflicting cultures that co-exist due to different characteristics of the management team.

Deal and Kennedy (1982) defined organizational culture as the way things get done around here.

We can say that Culture is  the ‘Consistently Used Language To Understand & Respond Everytime, across the organization'.

The following picture gives a nice overview of the concept of corporate culture.   

  Source-  www.1000ventures.com

Culture, an intangible overhang on an organizational work environment, emanates from the Promoters and the top management of the organization . It is communicated, reinforced and is consciously propagated across the organization through leadership at all levels represented  through symbols, logos, tenets, stories and legends, standard operating practices, values, mission and vision statements written and postured across the work places etc.

While it is not possible to recruit and organize a work force with same set of cultural values, organizations try to create appropriate atmosphere, reward systems, training to orient the employees towards the organizational culture.

Google presents one of the finest examples of a Great Organizational Culture that has led to phenomenal success.

http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/culture/

‘It’s really the people that make Google the kind of company it is. We hire people who are smart and determined, and we favour ability over experience. Although Googlers share common goals and visions for the company, we hail from all walks of life and speak dozens of languages, reflecting the global audience that we serve. And when not at work, Googlers pursue interests ranging from cycling to beekeeping, from frisbee to foxtrot.

We strive to maintain the open culture often associated with startups, in which everyone is a hands-on contributor and feels comfortable sharing ideas and opinions. In our weekly all-hands (“TGIF”) meetings—not to mention over email or in the cafe—Googlers ask questions directly to Larry, Sergey and other execs about any number of company issues. Our offices and cafes are designed to encourage interactions between Googlers within and across teams, and to spark conversation about work as well as play’

Google’s 10 point philosophy constantly reinforces its culture and values across the organization constantly and consistently. 

http://www.google.com/intl/en/about/company/philosophy/

Ten things we know to be true

We first wrote these “10 things” when Google was just a few years old. From time to time we revisit this list to see if it still holds true. We hope it does—and you can hold us to that

·         Focus on the user and all else will follow

·         It’s best to do one thing really, really well.

·         Fast is better than slow.

·         Democracy on the web works.

·         You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.

·         You can make money without doing evil.

·         There’s always more information out there.

·         The need for information crosses all borders.

·         You can be serious without a suit.

·         Great just isn’t good enough.

Customer Centricity, focus on  individual successes and for team accomplishments, ethical, informal, Innovation friendly, fun loving yet performance driven and endeavour to excel are some of the  hallmarks of Google’s corporate culture. Google recruits such employees that it feels, embody the company’s values and also have an unlimited hunger for information, that drives the organization towards its mission.

 The healthy and robust organizational culture at Google enables the company to

§  Have a Competitive edge derived from innovation and customer service

§  Derive Consistent, efficient employee performance

§  Have happy and satisfied employees and low employee turnover

§  Create Team cohesiveness

§  Achieve High employee morale

§  Be a Strong company with complete organizational alignment towards goal achievement

In today’s word of global work places, mergers and acquisitions, rapid change, defining, creating and maintaining a Culture across the organizations that constantly drives the enterprises to success, is indeed a challenge and is most often neglected.

Very often the mergers and acquisitions are either not pursued or rejected at the advanced stages just because the organizations discover that the cultures do not match! There are also examples of lack of cultural fit has resulted in confusion and failure of merged entities. It is very important to consider the nuances of the country specific, race specific and regional specific cultures when we evaluate the case for mergers, acquisitions joint ventures, strategic partnerships and the like.

Analysis of black-box conversations of a number of air-crashes has revealed that national culture has been  a contributory factor in analyses of air crashes. In one accident, the unwillingness/reluctance of junior crew  to speak up to alert the captain to a critical fuel condition was identified, along with the crew's acceptance of long delays from air traffic control.  

Replacing the crew with those from the countries which have informal relationships with superiors or orienting them with the need to be more proactive in inter level relationships and team work has led to dramatic reduction in the possibility of air crashes.

To Transform an Organization, you must first start by changing its Culture..

                                  

                                                        Factors affecting the Organisational Culture..

How is an Organizational culture established or changed in an Organization?

When an Organization is not having a strong culture or is facing limitation in moral or performance, it may be imperative to look at the current organizational culture, identify the weaknesses and area of change and take steps to create a clearly identified, desired culture that would foster excellence and a change of outlook.

This could be done through employee surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation, customer surveys where appropriate, and other internal research, to further identify areas that require change.

Formulate a clear strategic vision . In order to make a cultural change effective, a clear vision of the firm’s new strategy, shared values and behaviour is needed. This vision provides the intention and direction for the culture change (Cummings & Worley).

Cummings & Worley gave the following six guidelines for cultural change.

1.      Display Top Management commitment & lead by example.

2.      Identify and appoint change agents with strong communication and interpersonal skills. These individual should be catalysts, not dictators.

3.     Implement the change at the highest level to reflect the seriousness of the intent and also to fine tune the process.

4.     Create systems, processes, symbols, tenets, visual depictions, reward systems and communication procedures and activities to carry the change forward. These should motivate the employees to embrace the desired culture and establish the same across the organization..

5.     Select and socialize newcomers and terminate. Training should be provided to all employees to understand the new processes, expectations and systems.

6.     Develop ethical and legal sensitivity. Changes in culture can lead to tensions between organizational and individual interests, which can result in ethical and legal problems for practitioners

While Managers and Key employees could act as change agents, outside consultants may also be useful in facilitating the change process and providing employee training. Change of culture in the organizations is very important and inevitable. Culture innovations entails introducing something new and substantially different from what prevails in existing cultures.

The Consultants could help the organizations in continuously reinventing themselves by Cultural innovations that continue to keep the employees glued to the organization like a clan and perform strongly in line with the vision of the organization.

(Source Wikipedia )

The result of the exercise could be a vibrant and dynamic culture that leads the organization towards glory.

 While Organizational culture is an important part of a successful and continued existence of an organization, thriving organizations not only keep reinventing and adapting themselves but also carry on effective implementation of the process that internalizes and imbibes the employees with a strong and ethical performance driven culture leading to excellence.