Company Culture... Is it a truly Progressive Platform for a Company… Part Two…

Is company culture serving as a platform of control or as a platform of empowerment for employees? Part Two of a Two Part Special… 

Continuing from part one, it is important to engineer your company culture through the understanding of the already existing culture within your company walls along with the people who shape the organisation into a living, breathing entity! Digging a little deeper, one should consider the following as very important:

• Vision - Know what you want as a company of 5 so when you reach 50,000 employees, your company culture has evolved continuously, not ‘changed’ on the management orders of the day. Company culture is the personality of a company and does not swap out when you exceed 10,000 employees for a “big company culture”. Understand what you do, who you are and what values you collectively hold as a company. Then set the collected attributes as a cornerstone of company policy so you can build your organisation around it
• Employee Value - Know what personality type makes the best type of skilled and unskilled employee for your organisation. Match the personality propensity (creative/analytical/etc) with the role, team, department and division that makes up your company. What makes them feel like they belong and are part of something great? Management and leadership styles should seamlessly integrate with company culture to answer this question.
• Giver Taker Culture - Know what it is and what mix of giver/matcher/taker you need in your organisation to be great. Insert safeguards to ensure the mix you need and have mapped out in your organisation is actually deployed and protected.
• Feedback - Make sure you engage your employees meaningfully and management have alignment in belief, personality and training including the same style of leadership. Foxes in the henhouse are still dangerous!
• Hire the most suitable, not the “best” - we all love to hate pre-Madonnas, but the truth is the best are not always the most suitable for our organisation. A brilliant mind with a low tolerance for micromanagement will not last long in a company that thrives on hierarchy. Conversely, an individual who is reliant on the security of being micromanaged will not last in a company that values independent thinking and self direction. Remember... Einstein on paper was a Clerk… he also said "Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value." The fact is that value creation comes all shapes and forms. Be sure your company knows what it needs and is able to embrace those value creating employees correctly.
• Flexible By Design - Design your organisation in a manner that protects and grows company culture. Starting with the vision of the founding management team, a well engineered company culture will have processes to observe, define and react to the constantly changing culture over time. Be sure your design features allows company culture to prosper in your growing structures and be protected from harmful forces of all kinds.

Despite the difficulties, if you embrace the above variables and tips, be flexible in your vision for your company that is communally shared; take cultural aspects and culturally based concerns into your decision making processes, you will influence a company culture that is true to the kernel tenants laid out for your company at the beginning! What defines a great company is not its great products, but the great people within its walls. Everything else flows from that…

About the author: John Mulhall is a Marketing Technologist and newly Minted Software Developer. John is also a committed blogger and from February 2016 onwards, will be publishing blogs every second week on topics around Technology, Leadership and Sustainable Capitalism.

Sources/Credits:

Pics;

https://stocksnap.io/photo/CWYK8CLC61

https://stocksnap.io/photo/Y01VDYAX63

www.talentsnapshot.com

Credits;

Einstein Quote from Brain Quotes at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins131187.html

Company Culture... Is it a truly Progressive Platform for a Company… Part One…

Is company culture serving as a platform of control or as a platform of empowerment for employees? Part One of a Two Part Special…

Ever wondered how the guy who spends all his time backbiting every honest soul that was unlucky enough to cross his path ends up becoming the success story and poster boy for the company that you love? We often attribute such a success to an unforeseen factor that propelled him to stardom, maybe he “has what it takes” or maybe management have being fooled by a clever operator who knows how to manipulate his way to the top!

Regardless of the reasons, it would not be possible if company culture did not support such behaviour. Let’s map the behaviours out in this use case:

Exhibit A - ‘The Hotshot’: A narcissistic taker type who has only time for himself and feels no fellowship with his workmates nor empathy towards them. He is expert at feigning concern when it is useful to achieving his own ends and makes some employees who are more ‘warm hearted and caring’ very nervous for reasons they cannot really explain.

Exhibit B - ‘Management’: They are a mix of old and young that are all ambitious, uncomfortably trusting of each other and locked into a common goal of running a company to make the most money possible. They share in a command in control mentality and are very harsh with neigh sayers, problem raisers and independent thinkers whom they view as ‘trouble-makers’ and a threat.

Exhibit C - ‘The ‘ordinary’ Employee’: They are a mix of personalities whom are attracted by the paycheque and being disengaged, they stay for the paycheque. Any other personality type just doesn’t cut it at the firm. When something unethical happens that offends their sensibilities, their first thought is “oh, glad it was not me that got it” rather then “how dare they do that to my fellow workmate”. The ordinary employee is disengaged and does exactly what management asked for without question but not an iota more. Learned helplessness aka ‘oh, what can I do about it?’ is a common coping mechanism for workplace issues, which allows them to ‘let it go’.

So, Exhibit B (management) sets up a workplace culture that allows Exhibit A (hotshot) to prey upon Exhibit C (everybody else) gaining favour with Exhibit B (management) allowing Exhibit A(hotshot) to become more powerful and climb the ladder at the expense of ???

If it sounds familiar, then you have practical experience with the downside of classical management theory. The fact is that company culture can make or break your company as it grows/declines over time. This is why you should tune in to my next blog post in two weeks time about tips on engineering your company culture…

About the author: John Mulhall is a Marketing Technologist and newly Minted Software Developer. John is also a committed blogger and from February 2016 onwards, will be publishing blogs every second week on topics around Technology, Leadership and Sustainable Capitalism.

Sources/Credits:

Pics;

http://snapwiresnaps.tumblr.com/post/95921102796/filipp-kozachuk-free-under-cc0-10-download

https://stocksnap.io/photo/8EHBV1EZ39

www.pinterest.com

Credits;

Getting Started - Creating Value in a Tech Startup

Turning ideas into companies, tips on making it happen…

The startup scene in Dublin is vibrant yet many have poured their hearts and minds into their startups, with little to no success to date. Over 90% of startups fail, which by the numbers alone are turning out newly seasoned and committed entrepreneurs who are more learned, more agile and capable of achieving success with a start up then was probable before. With the climate in Dublin and elsewhere nurturing start ups with grants, tax breaks and mentorship, there is never been a better time to start up a new business. As the world slowly recovers from a horrendous recession, we see the buds of new business in cases such as India’s announcement of a $1.5 billion fund for startups just a few weeks ago.

From my own start up experience and observations, here are some points you may consider as central to increasing a startup's chances of success:

• Start like you mean to finish. Plot out what you want to become in success with a start up. Is it the next multi billion dollar company or a business to support you and your family with no wish to expand the business beyond a “mom and pop store”?
• If successful, will you sell your business? If so, when will this be? Plot a company size in revenue, employees and asset size (value of assets to turnover of business) when you will start considering offers to be bought out.
• Embrace modern Risk Management. Risk mapping, risk registers, risk assessments, 3rd party country risk, financial risk reports are all useful and are a good way to see your mapped future unfold as you build your business. If done from the start, you build into your structure a culture of risk management and thus information awareness.
• Scaling Systems. If you want to be the next billion dollar enterprise, you need to think about how IT infrastructure, systems design and development will fit into this vision. Will it be costly or seamless to scale your IT resources to fit business needs? Bootstrapped startups have great opportunities to develop low cost scalable systems using cloud and hosting providers. How it’s designed and built however will determine its true worth in availability, stability and scalability.
• Your digital brand. Market yourself for credibility, expertise and leadership as a Founder. Build your social media profile and creds with consistent high quality posts, blog articles and actions online that reinforce your digital brand message. If you approach a VC for funding, they will investigate you thoroughly including social media because in a startup, it’s the people, not the products that make the bew business successful.
• Network Network Network. You need to find co-founders, business partners and indeed potential customers in the marketplace. Meetup.com is a great start in your networking efforts that you should approach strategically.
• Community. Make sure you build bridges with your marketplace but also with the startup community. The access to people and shared experience is incredibly useful especially to a newly minted entrepreneur.
• Marketing. Build your marketing efforts based on tested Marketing models such as the 4P (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) and seek inputs on how you can develop a marketing strategy and a marketing mix that fits your startup
• Finance. If you are not funded, be sure to bootstrap everything you do, make sure your efforts are within a projected finance curve (ie. within budget) to where your business will start earning money for itself or you can reasonably expect to get VC capital on board so you can develop your business into a self sustaining entity.
• Create Value, then create Customers. Make sure your market research and everything you see from that point on is consistent with your products and services creating value for the customer. Qualitative approaches to service quality influence pricing and also create repeat customers. If you cannot create value in your customer's eyes, you will not have any customers.
• Stay Flexible. Start ups often start with a great plan and product. When the marketplace interacts with the start up, it often turns into something very different. Be sure your startup is structured flexibly so you “touch base” with your customers in a manner that creates value for them in what you do.
• Disrupting a market? If your product revolutionises a market place by its disrupter effect, then be ready to capitalise upon it. Have base plans for this type of dynamism in place so you don’t waste time wondering about what approach to take to capitalise upon it. Large companies act fast in protecting their market share from disrupters, so be sure to have a plan.

The need for flexibility, dynamism and intelligence is never more relevant than it is today even with a support structure in place. As the information era moves onwards, more and more opportunities will appear for aspiring Entrepreneurs. Taking that opportunity and turning it into something meaningful is often a hard learnt lesson through business failure. Once the budding Entrepreneur does not give up, their time will come and the days, months and years of trying will be rewarded by success.

Sources/Credits

Pics;

www.entrepreneur.com

www.stacksocial.com

www.picjumbo.com

Credits;

Technology & Culture… A RSVP with Disaster or Greatness?

What a Technologist actually is.. and how approach matters for successful outcomes

We all love our iPhones, iPads, Computers and Laptops as do we love to work in an office that has multi coloured beanbags as the conference room for all “official” meetings. If software is eating the world, technology is its master transforming industries, cultures and even professions into something more relevant in today’s world.

In a few short years, technology has changed the world with software in a leading role making lives better and more things possible that were previously out of reach! As a Technologist, I find there are two types of technology user, the deeply skilled who believe in it and those who are happy to be an end user of technology.

So what makes up a Technologist and are they the backbone of the Technology Industry building a culture and a legacy for others to follow? The free dictionary defines a Technologist as a “Specialist in Technology”. I think a Technologist brings more to the world and thus argue a true Technologist can be described as follows:

Believer in the power of technology to do good in the world

Giver by personality disposition always looking to collaborate and discerningly help others who share a positive attitude to community and helping out

Community is paramount to successful outcomes as technology depends on people collaborating over processes to develop progressively effective technologies

Creativity is wrapped in technical aptitude and knowhow

Commitment is not an issue for the Technologist who is committed to doing great things in technology

Enthusiasm never fades for technology in the right circumstances. A good Technologist if in the wrong circumstances will move to the right circumstances so the exploration of technology may continue

Continuous learner is a hallmark of a good Technologist who never stops learning, innovating and producing effective Technology that paves the way forward for society

The list is longer but the above gives a more detailed description of a Technologist in my view. Business often does not recognise the cultural gap between Technologist and the rest of the business. In various ways, business tends to be disapproving of anybody who cannot focus on profitability and the other management metrics that makes the business a viable venture. This has a core logic to it BUT if a Technologist’s focus is diverted from the core business of great technology, then the related outputs will be correspondingly below par and ultimately detract from the viability of the business. It technology cannot be great, then it will not unlock value for the customer which feeds into the bottom line of the business.

So bearing in mind the above description of a Technologist, how can this description bridge the culture gap between business and technology?

My first thought lies in the wider business culture that underpins business practice, leadership style and acceptable “people behaviour” on a daily basis. There is one way to do great technology but many ways to do good to great business.  In business; ok is acceptable, in technology nothing less then great will do!

So picture a business culture that is hierarchical and a Technologist working there that defines himself by the above highlighted keywords of:

Believer - Giver - Community - Creativity - technical aptitude - knowhow Commitment  - Enthusiasm - Continuous learner

The very fact that the Technologist maybe at staffer level in the company hierarchy relegates him/her to insignificant status within the company and thus open to all kind of interference from other (taker) business peers, untalented (taker) technical peers, leaders, managers and higher that may want something done and expect EXACTLY what they ordered from the Technologist. To keep his or her job, the Technologist will ensure they will get EXACTLY what they asked for. The real result is a talented employee disengaging from the company, who by culture considers the employee contribution to be insignificant in nature. As said above, if they cannot find a collaborative culture to grow in, they will migrate to one. Some companies lose allot of Technological talent down to this fundamental misunderstanding.

Companies in such a case may try to create/engineer a consultative technology sub culture, which may work in the short term. However, it is not sustainable even with a great technology manager as by design; culture clash mitigation lies with the Technology manager, not on the organisational design around him/her. Politics will find a way to reverse any stability and gains in the name of progress. The answer for hierarchical companies lies in overarching change to refocus the company's organizational design to better protect its elements by functional segment (V functional silo). If operations and technology cannot interact as one, then design a model where they can interact as two bodies. If agile project management risks a culture clash, then augment agile with silo deliverables and more reporting managed by very good project managers who have good organisational understanding and management skills.

The bottom line is that Technology already has a defined adhocracy culture that works well with the above description of a Technologist and thus an ideal setting for us Technologists to thrive in. It’s never a good idea from experience to think an Adhocracy Sub-Culture is sustainable when nested in a Hierarchical Culture. Also, thinking of finding a happy medium between the two means moving the expectations, practices and behaviours from the top down to a new hybrid culture that will ultimately fail due to the Giver Taker model where natural givers become victims of natural takers especially in conflict. As with all workplace conflict, productivity suffers alongside the victims of the dispute.

In my opinion, companies who cannot move to an adhocracy and/or clan culture should think about divisionalisation (i.e. create a technology company and an adhocracy culture) or outsourcing.  A company who gets it right, will become a technology company, not because their commercial product range is necessarily Technological. They will become a Technology company because they have made a home for Technologists who will guide them through the Technological age that we now live, grow, innovate and compete in.

Sources/Credits:

Pics;

https://stocksnap.io/photo/POB2Y8A2NU

https://stocksnap.io/photo/75VJAZIQQL

https://stocksnap.io/photo/RLC58MRIX8

https://stocksnap.io/photo/ZMLBPIOGTD

Credits:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/technologist

http://artsfwd.org/4-types-org-culture/

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/givers_take_all_the_hidden_dimension_of_corporate_culture