The Cacophony Leadership SeriesGettting your culture on.

The Cacophony Leadership Series is a collection of unconnected leadership grabs about a range of leadership matters. In large, they are excerpts from an unpublished manuscript, Leadership Matters.

An organisation’s culture is expressed in myriad ways. Here are twenty-one ways in which the personality of organisation can be expressed:

1. The tone set by the team’s senior leader. Is it clear or unambiguous? Is it visionary and is that vision communicated with passion, clarity and a sense of excitement that energises and invigorates the team?

2. How vigorously vision is implemented—is there a rush to ‘put legs’ on the vision, or does it remain a romantic notion of a future reality?

3. The mission statement of an organisation, particularly if it describes and encapsulates the nature and expression by which an organisation fulfils its core business. For example, the Perth-based John Hughes Automotive Group have established customer service as a complete mandatory. This shapes every expression of the organisation through any service or product provision. It is something that will not be diluted. While other areas may be negotiated, this will not;

4. The degree to which leadership is expressed, developed and respected;

5. The way a team celebrates;

6. The trust and security of the leadership team—the degree to which they have the support of each other and their constituents;

7. The level of innovation and creativity expressed within the organisation and the freedom for it to be expressed and the freedom for it to be expressed;

8. The way an organisation promotes itself;

9. The level of consistency in the way an organisation is promoted—dilute the consistency and you dilute the organisation;

10. The products/programs/service it provides;

11. The degree of unity and understanding of the vision, and the vigour with which it is pursued, and the preparedness to dilute it;

12. The age of the organisation, the age of a team’s leadership, the age of the target market of the organisation. The ways in which these factors express themselves are not necessarily consistent, but they can be significantly determining factors in an organisation’s culture. A group of people with an average age of 55+ will likely have a more traditional and conservative way of communicating and implementing change when compared with a group of people with an average age between 25-40 who may be contemporary, organic, fluid and rapid in their implementation of change. Neither is inappropriate, the question is whether the culture is appropriate for the organisation’s constituents or for the change the organisation is seeking to implement.

13. The generosity and preparedness of those within the organisation to give to a cause greater than themselves;

14. The way it recognises its people;

15. How enthusiastic the team’s leadership, members and constituents are to be part of the team and the journey of the team;

16. The degree to which leader figures within the organisation are respected and their consequent ability they have to exercise authority and leadership within the organisation;

17. The level of encouragement within an organisation;

18. The degree to which the team is pursuing a common cause or overriding objective;

19. The visibility of its leaders and the degree to which they display the qualities of a team;

20. The method of reporting and governance within an organisation. This effects both the ability of an organisation to implement change and the level of engagement felt by the constituents;

21. The degree of volunteerism within an organisation. This is primarily a determining factor in a not-for-profit organisation. For such organisations, having 20% of the people performing 80% of the work is actually perpetuating a model of administration and growth that is undesirable. Such organisations thrive and grow as people contribute to the cause, not partake in it (and those people grow at the same time). As many leaders within such organisations have said, ‘we’re building a battleship here, not a cruise liner’. In one scenario, you have a ‘ship’ populated by passengers, on the second, you have a ship filled with people actively engaged in improving the ship—fuelling it, refurbishing it, steering it etc.

22. The degree to which diverse expressions or areas of an organisation are linked to a common heart. Culture is easily diluted if it is not well understood. The result is a lack of clarity, confusion and a dilution of culture. Effectively, the right hand no longer knows what the left hand is doing and, if it does, it simply knows that it is doing things very differently.