Culture.com

The business and professional world is working feverishly to learn how to change its business strategies to capitalize on this .com world. A great deal of attention is being directed at designing, marketing, selling, and delivering goods and service in the networked environment. In contrast to the large amounts of energy being spent on these external business issues, internal infrastructure changes have received very little attention so far. When a company does address these infrastructure issues, they tend to focus on hardware and software changes and getting their technology up to speed.

The next question that must be tackled is how to create a corporate culture that matches the new .com business strategy. Corporate culture is a major component of the infrastructure engine that drives the organization in the direction it has set for itself. Culture is often defined as "the way we do things around here." If the way a company does things does not match its business strategy, the culture wins every time. No matter what a company says it intends to do, the way people actually behave, think, and believe determines what really happens.

CULTURE.COM Building Corporate Culture in the Connected Workplace is a practical handbook that guides the readers through nine key characteristics of a .com culture that every organization must embrace. Nine chapters focus on these characteristics, showing the readers how to diagnose their current status on each characteristic so they can identify the gaps where they are vulnerable. The readers learn how to create these characteristics and change old habits that no longer fit in the new environment. Case studies and interviews from business, nonprofit, and government settings are used to illustrate these change strategies in action. The reader will finish the book with a practical roadmap of strategies for how to shift their organization's culture from a liability to an asset as they set out to compete in the .com world.

Outline of Topics

Making the Jump to Warp Speed Net time is often referred to as a 10 to 1 ratio. Everything is moving ten times faster than the preNet world and getting faster all the time. Debugging on the fly has become standard procedure in many companies. A finished product is a product that is too late to market in the e-business world. Companies must get to market as quickly as possible and let their customers help them develop and debug products. "Launch and learn" is the phrase often used to describe this strategy of getting started rapidly and continuing the refinement of products in real time. Tweaking and tailoring products to specific customer demands is standard procedure. This change to rapid product launch means that companies have to take greater risks if they are going to operate on Net time.

Building a Corporate Culture in a Virtual Organization

As companies move into the e-business world, the model of most employees clustered in a large corporate office building will become less common. Employees will be scattered all over the world in small team clusters or home offices, or be perpetually on the road. The virtual organization where there is little cohesion, trust, or shared experience among employees can be a lonely place to work. As one person put it, "it's like bowling alone." What are the key elements of culture that will function as the glue to hold the organization together? How do you create a strong corporate culture in a virtual organization?

Living with Parallel Cultures during the Transition to E-Business

There is a transition phase during which most companies must keep the old business going while bringing up the new e-business enterprise. For some organizations this phase may last for a long time. Living with two cultures side by side is a challenge most companies have not faced before in this magnitude. If you are using a separate Internet group for the early development phase how do you re-integrate the cultures later into one business operation?

A New Breed of Teams in a .Com Culture

As the structure of organizations changes dramatically, the old subcultures break apart and people form new functional groups. Many of these new groups are short-lived as teams assemble and reassemble to meet changing customer needs. Employees at all levels must adapt to constantly changing team memberships. A .com culture will have to enculturates people rapidly into new teams and quickly creates loyalties among team members. Historically, this has been a slow process, but it cannot continue to work that way in the future. What will happen to the traditional problems of conflict between the tribes that organizations have dealt with in the past? Will the problem disappear or will it resurface in new forms?

Communication Belongs to Everyone in a .Com Culture

A wired company is an "open-book" organization. This changes the entire landscape of communications and distribution of power. Employees at all levels are far better informed about the operations, strategy, and finances of the company. They have access to tools that allow them to communicate with each other instantly. And they are more willing to second-guess leadership decisions and company direction than ever before. This chapter looks at ways to maximize the benefits and minimize the potential problems of communicating in an "open book" corporation.

Knowledge Management . . . Managing People's Brain Power

Managing people's brain power and the company's collective memory require new skills. Traditional managers will become facilitators who guide, but do not control, the knowledge management processes in their companies. Everyone needs easy access to knowledge, and everyone must tap into that collective base to improve his work. Organizations must find and leverage employees' knowledge more quickly than ever before. Companies must develop tools for managing knowledge in both routine and unstructured work. Learning from mistakes so everyone can benefit from the new knowledge is an important cultural trait to develop if a company is to be successful at managing people's brain power.

The New Corporate IQ and Getting Smart

Mistake learning, just-in-time learning, stealth learning, and rapid learning become the backbone of the corporate IQ. Organizations that do not build an intense focus on learning into their culture face repeated mistakes stemming from lack of systemic thinking and wrong or incomplete models for implementation. Those organizations are missing the opportunity to tap into their collective IQ. The corporate IQ that fuels the organization is the sum of the intellectual, creative, and emotional capacities of all employees and their ability to learn rapidly from each other. Every member of the organization is responsible for learning, and the organization must provide tools, time, and resources to enhance learning.

Linkages and Relationships Outside the Organization: A Cultural Challenge

Creating alliances is a way of life in the e-business world. There are too many good ideas for any one company to buy them all up. Buy-or-make options are being replaced by decisions to team up with other companies and produce joint products. There are many different types of alliances that companies can establish. Which ones to choose depends on the company's business strategy and its culture. Some of the alliances require high degrees of trust and cooperation between organizations. If high trust and cooperation are not the norm inside the company, it is very unlikely that these traits will be present in the alliance.
Leading the Journey to the Wired Enterprise
Leaders are the most influential cultural carriers in the organization. The leader's core beliefs and actions set the tone for the entire company. Cultural fit between the formal leaders and the organization is essential for building a strong corporate culture. In a .com culture, informal leadership takes on greater significance that in traditional business settings. The demands for speed and innovation at all levels of the organization make the traditional command-and-control management approach by a few formal leaders too cumbersome. Eight key leadership activities for shaping the culture are addressed in this chapter.

Contents

• Chapter One: Your Corporate Culture in a Clicks and Mortar World?
• Chapter Two: Making the Jump to Warp Speed
• Chapter Three: Building a Corporate Culture in a Virtual Organization
• Chapter Four: Living with Parallel Cultures during the Transition to E-Business
• Chapter Five: A New Breed of Teams in a .Com Culture
• Chapter Six: Communication Belongs to Everyone in a .Com Culture
• Chapter Seven: Knowledge Management Is Managing People's Brain Power
• Chapter Eight: The New Corporate IQ and Getting Smart
• Chapter Nine: Linkages and Relationships Outside the Organization . . . A Cultural Challenge
• Chapter Ten: Leading the Journey to the Wired Enterprise
• Chapter Eleven: Ten Final Tips for Building a Corporate Culture for the Connected Workplace