You'll often hear someone, when speaking to a friend about work, say, "So, what's the company culture like?" What is organizational culture? Essentially, organizational culture is the values, behaviors, and shared vision that contribute to the environment of an organization. For instance, your company might value autonomy. Your company might value kindness, but to truly create a compassionate culture, you'll need to ensure each employee follows certain behaviors. If your values don't play out in your employees' daily behavior, you'll never create the kind of culture you want. Finally, it's critical your company have a shared vision. Without a shared vision, it's difficult for your employees to work together towards a common goal, make effective decisions, and move the company forward. Oracle is a good example of Market Culture. In a Hierarchy Culture, there's a strong emphasis on efficiency and uniformity.
You’ll often hear someone, when speaking to a friend about work, say, “So, what’s the company culture like?”
In response, you might hear something along the lines of, “Really friendly people. Ping pong tables. Free pizza on Friday’s.”
Culture is a critical component of any organization. As the HubSpot Culture Code states, “Culture is to recruiting as product is to marketing.” To attract and retain talented people, you need to create a culture people will love.
But organizational culture is more than friendly people or a cool office space. Here, we’re going to define organizational culture and describe different types, so you can get a sense for what it is — and why it matters.
What is organizational culture?
Organizational culture is an inherent part of any workplace.
Essentially, organizational culture is the values, behaviors, and shared vision that contribute to the environment of an organization.
Let’s focus on one aspect of that for a moment — “values”. In this instance, we’re using values as an umbrella term over the whole organization, but also as a label to define the daily interactions between individual employees.
For instance, your company might value autonomy. On a larger scale, you might implement autonomy by allowing leaders to manage their own teams with little interference. However, to truly infiltrate the culture, you’ll want each employee, from intern to VP, to feel autonomous over their own schedules and workload.
For our purposes, it’s important to distinguish the difference between “value” and “behavior”. Your company might value kindness, but to truly create a compassionate culture, you’ll need to ensure each employee follows certain behaviors. Kindness can mean anything from being inclusive during team outings, to remaining open to new ideas during meetings.
If your values don’t play out in your employees’ daily behavior, you’ll never create the kind of culture you want.
Finally, it’s critical your company have a shared vision. Without a shared vision, it’s difficult for your employees to work together towards a common goal, make effective decisions, and move the company forward. Additionally, your vision is the motivating factor that can keep employees engaged when times get hard.
For instance, consider Life is Good, a company with an impressive 4.0 rating…
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