What motivates employees to become loyal and to stay with their organization for a significant period of time? There may be a certain number of factors that may include culture, values, behavior, mindset and environment of the people working there. Culture also carries certain organization’s practices like who you are hiring, how you are hiring and how you are organizing your company but it varies from country to country. You cannot define one idealist organizational culture for everyone.
How important is it to build a winning culture, polish talent of people’s skills working in that organization and how does it relate to society, skills and purpose? Well, it depends on upon the company you are working for if it is collaborative and competitive or it’s looking for speed and market growth? The community surrounded by the organization also plays an important role in building its culture. It should be a constant reminder for companies to embrace the community to sustain the healthy winning culture by adapting the required social values.
“After 40 years, GE Foundation is going through the most exciting moment of relocating its headquarters to Boston, Massachusetts which is a huge cultural shift for us,” said by Kelli Wells, Executive Director, Education & Skills- GE Foundation during a panel discussion at social Innovation Summit 2016. For us we have to be more rapid, fast and cope with the new culture as soon as we move, she added.
Companies and organization are running after the winning culture to retain their talent, market share, and good will. But what defines winning culture, impact matrix, strategy and social gain of adapting that winning culture? Winning culture is the set of well-defined values, team members, trust, healthy environment and factual result oriented goals deeply connected to each other. One has to understand and treat their employees as they like to be treated. The values must be deeply rooted and connected to employee’s heart that they actually live with those values.
Cultural Norms:
Values are the guiding principles for beliefs for any organizational structure. Professionalism, defensiveness, creativity, individualism, freedom of speech, and objectivity are few cultural norms that can be adapted by the organization to include them into their value system. A new employee must accept and adapt organizational norms and values to survive there. Norms are generally enforced by the employees and where they are coming from and it also depend on the organization how sharply it define norms and how strictly they are being practiced. For example in my host organization, the formal dressing is a must during Monday to Thursday and you may dress casually for Friday but it might not be the same for any other organization.
“Building partnerships within the organization is equally important as building it outside” said by Kelli Wells. Kelli refers GE Foundation as a big brain group that embraces and supports each other and together they have created a successful winning culture at work. So, in a multi-cultural environment where people come from all around the world, speak different languages act differently, but carry same values is a result of winning culture. Adaptability and acceptance are the most important factors in creating a winning culture. For example, I am Muslim from Pakistan so when I came here and started working in a totally new and different environment everything was so new and sometimes weird to me. On workplace, people are so connected to each other and more social in Pakistan but what I felt here is a bit different. I have seen people working and sitting on their designated spots all day and less communicating to each other so it’s a variation and beauty of cultural norms that are different from region to region.
In simple words, cultural norms are the standards, rules and guided behaviors for any organization to live with. For me, winning culture is the culture which is flexible, diverse, adaptable, and acceptable for everyone but still very much committed its roots and dignity. In some organizations, coming late and leaving early is not a problem if you are delivering your assigned tasks on time in contract with the ones which are really strict with their timings and work schedule. Few organizations believe on the productivity and efficiency and your physical presence is not very important in the office as you may work from home. On the other hand, there some organizations want your physical presence in the office and don’t believe in working virtually.
When a new employee or a consultant joins a new company, he might come with the culture and practices of his previous organization and might expect the new organizational culture would be same but it is not always the case. This idea is also true for business and companies; if you’re a new employee you must be flexible enough to adapt their corporate culture.
Role of Failure:
For some people learning leadership cannot be done with traditional ways but they learn more by sharing their personal stories and practical experiences. So, same as individuals, organizations also learn from their experience, both good and bad. It is ok to fail and learn rather than to fail and doesn’t learn from your failure.
Companies who celebrate failure are the ones who are getting ready to celebrate their success one day if they learn from the process. I believe that the role of emotional intelligence training is really important in company’s success and to attain targeted goals. As an individual, we might have heard that “failure is the biggest success” so it is same for big companies and organizations. They learn by doing things, if one idea doesn’t work, go to the next one but after gathering lessons learned from the first one.
“We have to shift as the world is shifting” Kelli Wells, Executive Director, Education & Skills- GE Foundation during a panel discussion at social Innovation Summit 2016. Change is inevitable; one can be successful as soon as he adapts new organizational culture and aligns it with his personal values.