Going through a merger? An acquisition? Moving your department to another location? Co-locating your group via cyberspace with another division in another country? If your organization is experiencing any kind of change, Milestones has developed a program that provides the framework for understanding how we react to change, offers your organization a new and positive way of looking at change so it works to your advantage, and will give you the language and method of thinking to accelerate your organization’s ability to change.
The benefits of this program are that change and transition are made easier for employees to not only accept, but embrace for more productive and positive outcomes.
Connected with helping organizations change is their culture. What culture type do you have? Are your leaders and employees aligned to shift to a “new” culture that is tied to the organization’s strategic goals? How do you achieve alignment?
Milestones, Inc. follows a globally-proven model and process for identifying culture and helping clients determine the type of culture that best serves the organization’s strategic goals and then helping make the change. Take a look at the case for culture and change, here.
Why look at the culture of an organization?
If culture is defined as the set of values and practices that are embedded in an organization, then knowing these helps in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Change often requires understanding these and then helping to move towards values and practices that support the desired outcomes expected by the change.
Change can be difficult when there are competing values at play. There are always competing values. Our goal is to support leadership in being successful. Thus, we start with understanding the existing organizational culture overall, in divisions, and even in strategic departments.
To begin, the idea is to identify and understand the dominant cultural focus of a company. Knowing this helps in consulting on how to help a company be more successful. Success is based on an integrated approach to organizing, leading, developing people, approaching customers and markets, improving quality, and innovating. If two or more companies need to work together or merge, especially if their cultures are different, start with their existing cultures. Also, another benefit to understanding culture is that the type of culture also indicates the type and speed of change that is possible.
Research that is based on empirical and quantitative studies and proven applications in hundreds of companies worldwide continues to show four main or dominant culture types. Companies usually have one main type but also have degrees of all four types. Without conscious integration of all four types in strategically managing and operating the company, success is risky at best.
Since the four types of cultures compete with each other, a conscious effort is required to integrate all four into the overall organizational culture.
Learn more about the culture types, how they conflict, how to deal with conflict, what your culture is, and if it’s right for your leadership’s strategic objectives and goals.
