Know how your organisational culture affects productivity

Every organisation has its own culture. And this culture is very well reflected in the way its people work and interact with each other within the organisation as well as outside the organisation. Some Organisational culture workshops aim at understanding the pulse of the current culture of the organisation and looking at what can be done to enhance the same. Others, on the other hand, may be simply a sharing of the culture the top management wants its people to follow.

An organisation’s culture is mainly driven by its top management. It’s basically a top-down approach. The way the top management of the organisation operates and treats its people, gets pretty much replicated by the rest of the organisation. Hence, the top management forms a major stakeholder in every organisational culture workshop.

The culture of an organisation is very important. It is what gives rise to a particular environment in the organisation, which in turn directly affects their productivity.

Culture is based on the vision, mission and values that the organisation lives by. These truly drive the organisation and run like blood through its veins. They tell people how the organisation wants them to behave and in what direction they need to head to be successful. It therefore fosters the communication within the organisation and also the way people are treated. And we all know how engagement and productivity changes when we feel valued in our organisations!

Hence, an organisation’s culture is not something that can be taken lightly. And if it’s not something you have been giving too much importance to, it’s time to think again. First find out what the current organisational culture is. You can do it through a survey that all your employees fill or through an organisational culture workshop which has activities that help you sense the same. Then bring your top management team together and ask them to brainstorm and come to a conclusion as to what they would want it to be.  Now you can run organisation wide organisational culture workshops which actually tell employees how the culture needs to be. To make it easy for them this can be shown in the form of observable behaviours that they can display. And can be done very effectively through various games and activities which simulate the work environment and tell people how they need to behave in various situations.  Thus organisational culture workshops can set the context very well and aid the top management in building a culture where their people are prospering and taking the organisation to a new level.

Organisational culture workshops are not as common as other workshops like Communication Skills, Managerial Skills, Personality Development, etc. However, they are crucial. They require the leaders of the organisation to have very high awareness levels and an acceptance that the current culture may not be the best and may need a change. After all, only when the leaders are open to change, can change be driven through the rest of the organisation. And it’s the leaders who need to walk that change. And organisational culture workshops can aid largely in that.

FEATURES OF ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Organisational Development has been around since quite some time now. Some 70 odd years to be more precise. But it’s still to pick up pace. At least in India. Somehow Indian companies are just not ready for it. Rather, I should say that they are not yet open to it. They feel it takes too much effort and time. And you know how we all are. Always looking for a quick fix!

Let’s face it, the market place is growing at a supersonic rate. Newer technologies are constantly outrunning the older ones and customer expectations are ever on the rise. Which means that all the organisations are perpetually on their toes, always aiming to get better so that they can give better.

So when organisations say that organisational development is not for them, I find it difficult to believe. After all, organisations are run by humans and humans are pretty complex beings. So we can start with team building training. Understanding them to help them be more productive can get really difficult at times. And that’s where organisational development fits in.

Let’s have a look at some of the features of Organisational Development and what their consultants do to give us a better understanding of the same:

• Behavioural Expertise – Organisational Development consultants are behavioural experts. They understand the human species very well and how their minds works and what they want. This makes it easy for organisations to create policies and structures which employees will relate to well, in turn increasing their productivity, commitment towards work And also improve performance of employees.             

• Change Agents – Change is something that can get difficult to manage, especially when its met with resistance. Organisational Development Consultants understand this very well and hence create interventions which help include the parties who are going to undergo the change in the change process. This improves the acceptance of the change and the process becomes smooth and a lot easier to manage

• Independency – How often have you been to a specialist and realised that you tend to get hooked to them because they know their stuff well and its not something you can do? Happens all the time, doesn’t it. But is it that desirable? Doesn’t it create dependencies? Organisational Development consultants and organisational culture workshops, believe that it does. They therefore ensure that they equip their clients to handle and solve their own problems before completing the intervention and exiting the organisation

• More than just a Doctor – Just like a Doctor, Organisational Development consultants help you diagnose problems. However, I must stress on the word help. They ‘help’ the organisation in figuring out what’s wrong, then together work to correct it and then re-evaluate the results and see what further actions need to be taken. They can well do it for you, but believe in empowering their clients and make them ready to face what the future holds for them.

If you feel you need to create some kind of change in your organisation or have some issue but are unsure how to go about solving them, Organisational Development is the way. It will help you move forward smoothly with long term effects that are sure to benefit you, your customers and your employees.