Saturday Odd Bits Roundup: Culturecopia
by Miki Saxon
Way back in the late seventies I was telling clients that their company culture was important. I didn’t use the term, because it was considered ‘smoke and mirrors’; but culture has always been the deciding factor when a person joins a company or leaves and also the bedrock of innovation and productivity.
From tiny Elk River, MN, where a local president says, “Sportech’s culture is one of the company’s top competitive advantages,” to Canada where “Canada’s most-admired corporate cultures are outperforming the rest — despite the economic downturn” to Internet powerhouses like Amazon and Zappos to Southwest Air Lines all credit their strong performance to their cultures.
Yum Brands is hitting its current marks and laying the foundation for the future with a massive cultural overhaul.
Yum! Brands, the owner of chains such as KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, Dave Novak, the chief executive, is presiding over a training programme that he says is the “biggest culture-change initiative in the world today”, affecting all of the firm’s 1.4m workers spread across 112 countries.
Culture drives the success of the Ritz-Carlton according to its president Simon F. Cooper.
A culture is built on trust. And if leadership doesn’t live the values that it requires of the organization, that is the swiftest way to undermine the culture. No culture sticks if it’s not lived at the highest levels of the organization.
From the start, right along with the marketing and financial plans, Administaff co-founder Paul J. Sarvadi focused on a culture that would empower employees.
…very few people spend the amount of time and effort to develop their people plan,” says Sarvadi, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Administaff Inc. “What’s their people strategy? What is the culture they want in their company? What is their organization and leadership philosophy for the company? How do they want to award people?
Once upon a time Covidien was Tyco Healthcare (yes, that Tyco), a company going no where. It agitated to be spun off, dropped a toxic name, changed its culture and is now a $10 billion 41,000 employee global innovation powerhouse.
Covidien had to make changes to everything from its product development process to its employee evaluation and compensation program.
Whether you’re part of a giant enterprise or an individual out on your own reading stories about how other companies embedded the right combination of hard practices and the right MAP in their culture will show you what to do.
Sure, you’ll have to tweak the idea to fit your needs, but you’ll be surprised how similar the basics are once you strip away the trappings.
Image credit: MykReeve on flickr
