Strategic Sense, in addition to providing Leadership Training, has made a commitment to highlight some of the remarkable authors, leadership professionals and business people we’ve had the great fortune of meeting and working with over the last 3 years. On Wednesdays you will see guest-posts from some of these folks. All are leaders in their field and have solutions to some of our biggest workplace issues.
As with Jeffrey Summers who wrote about building ultimate customer experiences, today we have a guest post that talks about culture.
Today’s Guest Post is by Professor Robin Stuart-Kotze PhD from
Behavioural Science Systems Ltd. ( founded in 1972 by Dr. Stuart-Kotze)
And now, here’s Dr. Robin Stuart-Kotze…
photo courtesy of RPichler
Different parts of global organisations have different cultural values. These can be strengths, but they can also get in the way of overall performance. Global managers need to be able to recognise which is which. Unfortunately in many cases what passes for attention to cultural differences is often no more than an attempt at good manners – generalisations on how one should greet, meet, entertain, and deal with different nationalities.
A proper understanding and appreciation of cultural differences is critical to managing in a global environment.
Large catch-all regions like EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) are far from homogeneous. There are major differences in the way managers in different cultures do things. What seems to be the stumbling block to dealing effectively with these differences is a lack of understanding about what culture, in a management sense, really is. The simplest and cleanest definition is;
“What we value around here (or don’t)”.
Values represent the judgement of what individuals or organisations consider is important. They form the basis for how decisions and actions are evaluated. The power of deeply held values is that they determine how individuals act as a matter of course – how they naturally react to various situations. Understanding culture means understanding what individuals do without thinking – what their reflex response is to various situations.
If you want to know what managers in different parts of your organisation value, observe what they do. We do things which we consider productive, effective and rewarding – to us. And we try not to do things which are unproductive, ineffective, and not rewarding. One reason that organisations and managers fail to deal effectively with differing cultural strengths is that they tend to fall back on cultural stereotypes which only apply in the most generalised and non-specific sense, and at worst can be dangerously xenophobic and misleading.
A company’s core values define what it stands for.
They should spell out what is acceptable and what is unacceptable behaviour. To ignore them is to bring into question the entire corporate culture. People, both internally and externally, have a perception of an organisation that is shaped by what they believe to be its core values – or the lack of them. That perception is confirmed or disconfirmed by their daily dealings with individuals in the organisation.
What would you say are the values that are held across your entire company? If you are making the assumption that all the people across your organisation conform to some stated set of corporate values then you are assuming that they will behave in a certain manner. However if they don’t all hold to the same values they will behave in widely different ways, some of which will be appropriate and some of which won’t. Thinking globally and acting locally can only go so far; success cannot result from people pulling in different directions.
Behaviour is the reflection of values.
You can’t observe values themselves; you can only observe how they are demonstrated. It is the behaviour of individuals and groups in an organisation that shows what its values really are. For instance, the stated values of Harley-Davidson are:
- Tell the truth
- Be fair
- Keep your promises
- Respect the individual
- Encourage intellectual curiosity
But how do you measure whether the people in Harley-Davidson are doing these things? If you asked them directly about their commitment to the company’s set of core values it would be highly unlikely to find anyone who would say that they do not tell the truth, are not fair, don’t keep their promises, don’t respect the individual, and don’t encourage intellectual curiosity. Simply asking people to articulate their commitment to values does not produce accurate or satisfactory results. You need to find out precisely what they do as they manage their jobs.
All of these values can be translated into behaviours, and the behaviours can be observed and measured. The first step is to articulate clearly, in terms of specific behaviours, what each of the core values actually mean. Once you do that you are able to recognise when individuals are exhibiting truthful behaviour, behaving fairly, keeping promises, showing respect for people, and doing things that encourage intellectual curiosity.
For instance, if an individual were to do things like:
- Always meet commitments
- State views frankly and openly
- Give and accept open and frank feedback
- Provide recognition and reward with maximum transparency
- Make decisions that are evidence based
Would that behaviour mean that he or she could be considered to be a person who tells the truth? It’s possible to observe all these behaviours and put a numeric scale score of zero to ten on each of them and thereby generate a measure of the degree to which individuals, teams, or business units are demonstrating the value “Tell the truth”.
Patti Blackstaffe, President of Strategic Sense Inc, is a Speaker, Strategic Advisor and Trainer in Leadership, Customer Service and Cultural integration through Mergers and Acquisition.You can book her to speak at her personal page.
Need Strategic Sense for your business? – hire us for Leadership Development of individuals, teams, group training and company strategy. Read what folks have to say about her eBook Leadership XXL: 11 Practical Steps to Living Leadership Extra, Extra Large.
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