JBALLPPOSTS WILL NOW BE ON SUJAVANA.
Whether you are a seasoned
entrepreneur or a fledgling start-up, there is one thing that can make all the
difference when it comes to sustaining your success. It is called
Organisational Culture and it can take all shapes and hues.
Two shapes that you must learn
to recognize are those that represent an umbrella
and an upturned umbrella. I
prefer to call the latter shape as a mixing
bowl.
These shapes – the umbrella and the mixing bowl –
illustrate two dimensions of how an organisation’s culture can impact its growth
performance. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks, but when the focus is on
sustainable growth, the impacts from predominance of either need to be clearly
understood. Let’s look at both from this perspective.
|
Umbrella Culture
|
- Many
of us grew up with this culture and are comfortable with it.
- The
organisation acts as an umbrella to the teams working for it.
- The umbrella shields the people and the functional roles with its structures, systems, processes –the insulation from external disruptions, are usually very useful, even if they may not be permanent.
- The protective nature has an inherent
disadvantage, in that it limits exposure to external vagaries in the
environment. It blunts the resilience and agility to counter changes.
- Loss
of risk appetite and easier management using elaborate governance and controls
are highly encouraged.
- Managers
and leaders get too comfortable under the buffer of the umbrella.
- Umbrella culture offers
a nice and safe environment for a mediocre performance.
|
|
Mixing Bowl Culture
|
- This
is the umbrella culture flipped over.
- There
is a trend to stop across-the-board protecting
and shielding.Instead there is an encouragement and support for exposure
and out-of-the-box experimentation.
- Besides
holding the existing ingredients, the mixing bowl allows addition of new ones,
even being generous and allow spilling over the sides.
- Some
good ingredients may be lost, but other good ingredients get added and they enrich
the old remaining ones, creating new flavours, odours.
- The
unbridled exposure and agile response to what exists on the outside creates
exciting opportunities to sustain and grow.
- A solid bowl casing
(shared values) a mixer (leaders) and hopefully a good spatula (processes) - these
provide the governance frameworks that ensure that the broad visionary goals
are realized in a fair manner.
|
So
what do you have in your organisation – an umbrella or a mixing bowl?
