A Conversation about “Operational Excellence” – So what do you mean by “Culture”?
First a recap, in my first articles about Operational Excellence (OpEx) I wrote about conversations between colleagues as a method of defining OpEx for your particular business. The second article outlined a framework of Practices and Performance to guide the conversation. The premise for the framework being that sustainable excellence in performance is fundamentally underpinned by excellent practices. The third article gave a brief outline of key practices that are common in excellent organisations and the fourth looked at some of the key performance measures that provide the “balance on the scorecard”, and why they’re important. This fifth article looks at the context in which OpEx is set, the culture of the organisation.
Once again, I remind you of the caveat in article 1 “what OpEx means to your business has essentially to be defined by you and your colleagues, understanding your particular circumstances, the maturity of your business, your customers and competitors”.
Try Googling “culture definition” - 322 million hits, bewildering! Where to start – What’s helpful?
My experience of culture is essentially experience based, as probably is yours. I’ve been lucky to be involved with many different organisations which has given me the opportunity to do a little “comparing and contrasting”, observing different cultures and climates and in a moment, I’ll introduce a framework for understanding where a culture sits within it.
However, first, it’s worth looking at a couple of thoughts from some influential thinkers;
Schein defines organisational culture as “a pattern of basic assumptions invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems”. My take out here is that culture is learned by what works successfully and transmitted through the organisation by its members.
And Brown adds “….this pattern of values, norms, beliefs, attitudes, principles and assumptions may be unwritten or non-verbalised behaviour that describe the way in which things get done; to give the organisation its unique character.”
So, to a layman such a myself for practical purposes, culture is malleable in that it can be learned from experiences and it relates to “how we do things around here”.
Let’s look at a framework provided by Harrison and Stokes who identified four main organisational cultural orientations. These are the Power Culture, the Role Culture, the Achievement Culture and the Support Culture. Each of these orientations has its own strengths and weaknesses. It is suggested that they do not exist in isolation but are experienced at differing levels, where one or two may be more prevalent than the others.
While the intention is not to go into too much detail here, each of the cultures has strengths and weaknesses that are worth understanding, at least so that you can recognise their relative strengths and weaknesses and understand where your organisation currently sits.
Power CultureIn this type of organisational culture a dominant head sits in the centre surrounded by intimates and subordinates who are the dependants. In this regard a personal, informal and power management style becomes valued. Normally the organisational structure is described as a web structure that is hierarchical in nature. The web structure means that the whole structural system connects to the central power while being hierarchical in nature implies that power is shared from top to bottom.
Power culture is found in both small and larger organisations. In organisations run by power-oriented leaders, leadership resides in a few and depends on their ability. Those exercising power strive to maintain control over subordinates. In such systems, the size of the organisation is a problem because if the power web links to too many activities it can get overstreched and break.
Whilst power cultures can be decisive and determined in pursuing their direction, there is a danger that tends towards a rule by fear, with abuse of power for personal advantage on the part of the leaders, their friends and their protégés" that can lead to nepotism and favouritism.
Power Culture – Advantages and Disadvantages
Has anyone else been watching the Trump Administration?
Role Culture This type of culture focuses mainly on job description and specialisation. Work is controlled by procedures and rules that spell out the job description, which is more important than the person who fills the position.
Organisations with this type of culture are characterised by a set of roles joined together in a logical fashion. These roles are coordinated at the top by a narrow band of senior management. They operate on the assumption that people are not to be trusted, so they do not give individual autonomy or discretion to members at lower levels. This culture results in a hierarchical chain of command which creates stability and predictability. It can offer security for organisational members by offering a predictable rate of advancement and a chance to acquire specialist skill. Essentially, this culture exists to ensure that organisational members do not make mistakes, while emphasising legality, legitimacy and responsibility.
Role clarification is crucial in an organisation with a role culture. The emphasis of role clarification is based on technical expertise and specialisation more than product innovation or product cost. This presents a limitation to the organisation; role cultures are likely to be most successful in stable and predictable environments. Conversely this type of culture can find it difficult to survive in an environment that requires the ability to be adaptive and responsive to dynamic changes.
Role Culture – Advantages and Disadvantages
Such an organisation is often stereotyped as bureaucratic because of its mechanistic procedures.
Achievement Culture An achievement culture is generally defined as one in which competent people are aligned behind a common purpose. It’s often referred to as a task culture, where the power structure is not obviously part of a traditional hierarchy or position within the organisation. There is instead a sharing of power, a balance between formal roles and the expertise necessary to complete the task. The completion of a task is important through team work in line with the organisational goals.
Unlike a role culture, where positional or personal power plays an important role, skills, competencies and expert power form the core of an achievement culture. Therefore, authority is based on appropriate knowledge and competence.
The strength of an achievement culture is that in those environments where the market is competitive, product life spans are short and constant innovation is a necessity; this culture can be highly successful. This is due to functions and activities that are team structured and evaluated in terms of their contribution to organisational goals.
The advantage of team rather than individual jobs is that it assists in creating the high-performance, high flexibility, and high-commitment organisation. This is because teams generate positive synergy through coordinated efforts.
Whilst using teams is an advantage, the main weaknesses of the achievement culture are that it overshadows individual performance and it can lead to burnout of team members.
Achievement Culture – Advantages and Disadvantages
Examples of this type of culture can be found in many High-Tech organisations.
Support Culture Support-cultures promote individuals as the central point in the organisation. They differ from the achievement culture which emphasises teams. The organisational climate that is based on mutual trust between the individual and the organisation and support culture is often referred to as a person-oriented culture.
The structure of this culture is characterised as being low in formalisation and centralisation. Authority tends to be is assigned based on task competence and as a result individuals influence each other through example and helpfulness.
Management decisions typically take into consideration the effect of outcomes on people, with the implication that the wellbeing of employees is important to managers in this type of organisation. Decision making tends to be through discussion and consensus and communication is often verbal or informal, and usually flows in all directions. This can be time consuming however once consensus is achieved, the organisation is likely to be fully committed behind the decisions.
Support culture can create a conducive workplace environment that encourages proactive, experimentation and openness to change, conversely the personal preferences of individuals can interfere, which can be at the expense of organisational needs.
Support Culture – Advantages and Disadvantages
Examples of this culture can be found in many charity type organisations.
The framework broadly characterises different types of culture, it’s unlikely that your organisation (or all parts of it – there can be subgroups within the main organisation) fit neatly into one of the boxes.
So, what? How does this help in understanding what your operationally excellent business should be like?
Have a look at the grid below, where do you think you are?
Could you benefit from a shift to more structure? Can you use high performance teams to deliver results? Are your people supportive, trusting and helpful to one another, or is it appropriate that the business needs the boldness and decisiveness to drive forward? Do you recognise some of the shortcomings outlined in the disadvantages of each characterisation? Simply understanding the options can be helpful in giving direction.
Where do you want to be? In your business what do you need to do more of and less of to get there? How will your leaders model the new behaviours, because leaders have the greatest powers to create culture?Culture can suppress performance and enhance performance. It is a dynamic, not a static system, that changes over time. It is learned and is transmissible. Importantly we all create culture 100% of the time - we cannot not create it - tolerating is still creating.If all this talk about culture seems to be a little bit fuzzy round the edges, don’t worry, it’s supposed to be! It’s about people and we all know how difficult they are! Even anthropologists refer to deep levels of culture that are unconscious yet nevertheless they drive our behaviours.
I like to think of it in the same terms as Richard Feynman the Nobel winning physicist and key developer of quantum electrodynamics when he said, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”. However, you can still put a man on the moon with Newtonian physics.
Remember that to be Operationally Excellent your business does not need the “best culture” it needs an appropriate one for your environment and maturity. What’s important is that you consider the options, recognise and agree the changes required and action the critical ones to help you improve.
I hope that during your conversations about Operational Excellence, this “Culture Framework” will help to set a relevant agenda for discussion.
Once again, I trust that this has been a worthwhile investment of your time. I’m planning to publish a final article about “how to pull the levers”. It looks from the “views” that there is considerable interest in the articles. If you’re one of the interested ones, please email me at
mj-a@ outlook.com with your comments thoughts or questions on this or any of the previous articles, or give me a call on
0788 5524 208.Mike Johnson
