Everyone is familiar with corporate culture. But you may be surprised to learn that, less than a generation ago, it was unheard of. Indeed, the concept was initially controversial.
Companies resisted the notion they were about anything more than their numbers.
Terrence Deal and Allan Kennedy introduced the term in their trailblazing 1982 book, Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. Since then, companies have come to compete on culture as much as on goods and services. You see it whenever a company touts its ranking on the Best Places to Work list.
Sociologists define culture as the totality of attitudes and behaviors that distinguish one group of people from another. In business, culture is commonly regarded as “the way we do things around here.”
There are profound cultural differences between Google and Microsoft, between Toyota and General Motors, between Southwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines, between Nordstrom and Macy’s, between Bank of America and Chase Bank. The list could go on.
Now just as cultures vary from company to company, so do cultures vary within a single company. Each corporate culture consists of many smaller subcultures. The closer you look at subcultures, the more variability you see.
For example, in any one company, you may notice cultural differences between headquarters personnel and field representatives, between the engineering geeks and the marketing mavens, between salaried staff and hourly workers, between the day shift and the night shift, between manufacturing and sales, and so forth.
All these fault lines reflect the priorities and sensitivities of various perspectives, owing to the divergent circumstances, backgrounds, and values of people.
Another kind of subculture, equally important, gets too little attention. It reflects particular processes, such as quality or planning. Of special importance to me is the culture around communication of business issues and information.
By culture of communication, I mean the tendency of people throughout a company to share information, ideas and their intuition on business matters in a particular way. It is less about the flow of official information and more about the countless decentralized eddies of information converging and diverging throughout a company.
Ideally, any company’s culture of communication would have as its hallmarks eight descriptors that just coincidentally begin with the same letter: clear, credible, compelling, constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. That’s a tall order, but it’s mightily important to a company’s success.
You can easily think of examples, for better and for worse. A worst-case scenario might involve the proverbial Mushroom Theory, keeping employees in the dark and feeding them–well, you get the idea. A best-case scenario would embrace employees as intellectual partners in the enterprise, whose thinking is integral to the company’s success. You can see just how critical communication is to performance.
Here are 17 diagnostic questions that a company’s leadership should ask itself to get a quick fix on its communication culture:
- Do people share business information quickly and eagerly, slowly and reluctantly, or not at all? How does management set the right tone for this?
- Are most supervisors addressing performance issues as they arise, in a spirit of support and improvement, or pushing aside the uncomfortable issues and beating around the bush? What is the core message there?
- How well do senior executives rise to the challenge of sharing a vision, of conveying news about the marketplace and competition, of inspiring camaraderie and performance through the ranks? Is it a claim on their time?
- How often do employees learn of substantive developments through the grapevine or by viewing a local TV newscast? How do they feel when they do?
- What kinds of misconceptions are contaminating the truth of the company and its future as perceived by key stakeholders? How does management inadvertently contribute to the rumor mill?
- When supervisors and managers realize a deadline will be missed or a budget exceeded, how long do they sit on the information before the inevitable occurs?
- To what extent do hourly employees feel genuinely empowered to offer suggestions for improving a process? What is management’s reaction on hearing suggestions?
- How does “street” intelligence picked up by ground-level workers make its way to senior management, if at all? Is it valued? How many levels must it pass through? Is it still coherent by the time it gets to the top, if it ever gets there?
- Do the company’s publications and intranet sites have an unrealistic optimism, the narrative equivalent of a graphical hockey stick?
- Does the organization rely on cascading important strategic information down through the ranks one level at a time? How much information ultimately gets through?
- On introducing a new initiative or program, does senior management think through the day-to-day implications on rank-and-file employees? How does it convey those implications and expectations?
- Is proprietary information shared with employees or kept close to management’s chest? How often are employees reminded that, in the parlance of the home front in wartime, “Loose lips sink ships”?
- Does the company convey information about its competitors? Is the attitude toward competitors one of respect or hostility?
- Are decisions, visible behaviors, a spirit of collaboration, and other informal tools of communication managed as communication? Or are they left as an afterthought and allowed to interfere with strategic messaging?
- Do middle managers hoard information that would be of strategic use to subordinates or peers?
- How much infighting is there between departments? Do they withhold information in attempts to embarrass one another? Is there a tendency to elevate minor issues?
- Finally, what kinds of communication are just completely unmanaged and thereby allowed to send unintentional messages? Don’t settle for your own point of view as a response to these questions. Challenge yourself. Get a cross-section of employees together over pizza at lunch time and go through these questions one-by-one. I’m betting the discussion will cast a spotlight on some critical problems.
Then, treat the revelations as a diagnostic. Do something about them. And for a change, tell your people what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, how you yourself are committed to change, when they can expect to see the difference, and how they can hold you accountable.
The sooner you pick apart your culture of communication, the sooner you can use it to gain a competitive advantage that your rivals are ignoring.
Liz Guthridge is a consultant, author, and trainer specializing in strategic change communications. Department leaders of Fortune 1000 companies hire Liz and her firm Connect Consulting Group LLC when they need their people—who are confused, angry or in denial—to adopt complex new initiatives so they can quickly change the way they work. For more information, contact Liz, liz.guthridge@connectconsultinggroup.com or 510-527-1213. Follow Liz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/lizguthridge.
