Is Your Organizational Culture Strategic?
One thing that I find most businesses believe is that they are very unique. Certainly, they have unique characteristics, and certainly, their culture has some unique features. Are they strategic, groundbreakers, movers and shakers? Is your organizational culture strategic?
What do many organizations do to develop their culture? They replicate, borrow, copy, or steal. They do this with ideas that they believe hold the power to create their future success. It is not uncommon. It may be part of learning and growing. Taking someone’s idea of a cart and a wheel, throw a motor in it, and it’s a car.
Similar but Different?
What your organization does may be a take-off, branch off, or knock off of a previous idea. What do most flat screen TV’s look like? They look pretty much the same. Most cars have four wheels, and motorcycles two. Yet, they aren’t the same.
Organizational strategy and culture has everything to do with your success. It is applicable to your marketing, your brand, and your products or service. Most organizations fall into one of several categories.
The first category represents the organization that decides they want to conquer the competition. So they challenge competitors head-on. They provide similar but (yet they believe) different products and services. In addition to keeping existing customers, they also want people who use a competitor to switch.
Another somewhat different category is for those who to take a defensive posture. You focus mostly on well-established relationships. You work hard to build business with your customers, not necessarily for them.
There is a difference between building with customers and building for the customer. When building with your customer, you upgrade, enhance, and improve what is already working, and you do it together. You defend your business against the competition.
There is still another path though and that is the path of creating what is next. Organizations stick their neck out, they take risk and they try something new or different. They are not just doing things differently. They are actually doing different things.
Organizational Culture Strategic?
We might consider products like the Keurig coffee maker, digital photography as opposed to film, or even the 2007 launch of the iPhone. In each of these cases, they took a risk to do something different. They transformed original products or results by being very different. They became attractive. People switched.
Perhaps the biggest mistake that any organization can make is believing that they are unique but yet they follow what everyone else in their industry does. Your hardest challenge may be separating yourself from what anyone, can get anywhere, at any time.
In many industries, this is exactly why the customer experience is critically important and it develops from your organizational culture.
Is the development of your organizational culture strategic, or are you trying your hardest just to compete?
– DEG
Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.
