A recent post on this blog looked at how lessons analysis can help organisations identify some of
the high-impact issues affecting their performance. Yesterday we examined ‘supply chain management’ and discussed some of the problems that a
blanket approach in this area can cause.
We now turn to the delicate issue of cultural friction.
What is the problem?
Nations have cultures, as do organisations, departments and the
teams within them. Defining a ‘culture’
as the collective expression of people’s thoughts, feelings, prejudices and
priorities, no-one should be surprised that where cultures rub up against one
another, things happen – for good or bad.
The smaller and simpler an organisation, the less scope
there is for cultural differences to appear; however, as companies grow,
specialisms develop, teams are formed, departments are created…and white space
appears between them on the organisation chart[1] within
which misunderstandings can grow.
The problem for any organisation - which is an artificial
creation, engineered for a specific purpose (e.g. lending money, playing
football, curing disease etc.) – with competing cultures is how to manage these
clashes for positive ends and not let them harm the purpose towards which they
should all be working. Some of the bonds
that sustain teams can prevent effective cooperation with ‘outsiders’ and lead
to inefficiency.
How does it manifest
itself?
Companies that have become multinational through merger and
acquisition may discover tensions between people used to doing things a certain
way; some cultures encourage long lunch breaks and embrace a so-called ‘work/life
balance’ whilst others consider ‘lunch is for wimps’.
Some organisations have developed hierarchies by function as
opposed to rank, whereby information is judged not on merit but on the role of
its originator (in the military, the ‘combat arms’ (i.e. infantry etc.) have a
sense of their own importance compared to those in combat service support (i.e.
logistics and administration); in banking, such delineation occurs between the
revenue-generators (i.e. sales and trading) and those that measure, manage and
consume said revenue (i.e. operations staff in the ‘back office’) – in either
case, this is prejudice at work.
Other organisations have tensions between project and operations
teams, with the former enjoying the variety and ‘expeditionary mind-set’
inherent in large-scale projects whilst the latter seek the relative stability
and repetition of day-to-day operations.
Tensions occur when the competing priorities become obvious through
working in close proximity (i.e. project people need systems to be shut down to
enable enhancements to take place whilst operations staff need minimal interruption,
if any, to day-to-day processes).
What is its impact?Cultural frictions can lead to inefficient ways of working and poor knowledge transfer between teams and departments, as healthy rivalry descends into tribalism, back-biting and the protection of knowledge for internal political purposes; morale suffers and each party blames the other(s); retention becomes a problem, with experienced staff leaving (taking most, if not all, of their knowledge with them) and new-joiners are overloaded and indoctrinated into the internecine warfare as early as possible.
What recommendations
are made to address it?
Organisations that, through lessons capture sessions, have
identified cultural frictions as a problem have reviewed career structures with
a view to promoting those that have broad experience across several functions,
to encourage transfer between departments and discourage the ‘stove-pipe’
mentality that comes with over-specialisation.
Others have provided mentoring and coaching to leaders to
help them ‘walk the walk’ of cooperation instead of relying on merely ‘talking
the talk’ of ‘One Team’ etc.
To address the problem of knowledge loss upon the departure
of experienced personnel, some organisations have introduced knowledge retention interviews, personal wikis and communities of practice (CoP). For
information about these services and for news of our learning cultural audit, please
visit the Knoco website.
[1]
Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache Improving
Performance – How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart; San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995
No comments:
Post a Comment