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StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures How Work Gets Done Model

Corporate Cultures – Leader Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment

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The Leader Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment represents a moderate leader led work environment that gives lower level mangers and supervisors somewhat more autonomy to direct day-to-day activities without relinquishing centralized control. This culture set realizes the benefits of centalized direction setting and improved, if not rigid, consistency. The reliance on rules and standards provides some degree of local flexibility that heightens situational responsiveness but diminishes consistency in actions and results between workgroups and locations.[wcm_restrict plans=”61128, 25542, 25653″]

The following characteristics, benefits, risks, and risk mitigators are representative of the Leader Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment.

StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures How Work Gets Done Model

Figure 1 – Leader Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment

Characteristics

  • Strategic vision held by a few executives
  • Focus on organizational activities, standards compliance, and organizational results achieved
  • Trust in leadership
  • Senior leaders look for opportunities to focus the organization
  • Decision-making authority resident within the senior leadership team
  • Senior leaders relied on to resolve most/all problems
  • Senior leaders establish strategic and tactical priorities
  • Senior leaders direct routine activities
  • Hierarchical organizational design led by authoritative executives
  • Standards and expectations are established by leaders with guidance on when and how to apply them
  • Organizational results are monitored by well-structured metrics
  • Standards and expectations govern most/all activities
  • Individuals are held accountable for results
  • Accountability achieved through senior leader attention
  • Low tolerance for not following established standards and expectations
  • Senior leaders determine what skills and knowledge is required
  • Careful selection of leaders
  • Technologies are used to aid process implementation and performance monitoring

Benefits

  • Consistency of vision, mission, and direction
  • Organizational focus and alignment to organizational goals attainment
  • Accountability for management priorities
  • Highly consistent work performance that yields greater efficiency and reliability
  • Organizational flexibility; few people needed to change rules and standards

Risks

  • Supervisors lack the authority to deal with local issues potentially allowing them to grow in impact before being addressed by senior leaders
  • Supervisors not empowered to resolve local issues requires management intervention leading to overload
  • Organizational issues and friction not in leadership’s view are allowed to fester unresolved
  • Supervisor and individual initiative is suppressed preventing the organization from benefiting from these insights and innovations
  • Limited ability to tailor job performance to individual preferences lowers overall job satisfaction and may result in higher turnover
  • Ad hoc approaches to solve problems that do not fit established rules
  • Endless rule making by lower level managers
  • Personnel often not willing to collaborate or support others outside their immediate group unless it directly benefits them; resulting in significant inter-organizational friction
  • Individuals below the senior leadership level feel little ownership for organizational results
  • Loss of operational direction and performance decline in the absence of senior managers
  • Loss of senior management vision and oversight through their over-involvement in work details
  • Innovation below the senior manager level

Risk Mitigators

  • Well documented and broadly communicated organizational vision and goals
  • Comprehensive succession planning at all organizational levels
  • Push day-to-day decision-making to the lowest organization level practical
  • Involve employees in initiatives impacting what and how they do work
  • Employ organizationally matrixed teams to implement important initiatives
  • Provide opportunities for supervisors and employees to observe and participate in non-mission critical decision-making working sessions

Note that organizational execution of one or more culture characteristic tenants may be flawed. In these instances, elimination of the deficiency often serves to significantly improve performance.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”61128, 25542, 25653″]

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StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures How Work Gets Done Model

Corporate Cultures – Supervisor Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment

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The Supervisor Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment is the centerpoint of StrategyDriven Culture-base Work Performance Model. This culture set represents a moderation of most benefits and risks. Subsequently, organizations can more easily flex in the cultural direction needed to implement a change. Conversely, these moderated cultural characteristics may lack the significant intensity necessary to rapidly drive change.[wcm_restrict plans=”61114, 25542, 25653″]

The following characteristics, benefits, risks, and risk mitigators are representative of the Supervisor Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment.

StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures How Work Gets Done Model

Figure 1 – Supervisor Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment

Characteristics

  • Executives and senior managers focus on business strategy and organizational culture
  • Focus on workgroup activities, standards compliance, and results achievement
  • Culture of ‘we do it like professionals’
  • Trust in supervisors who serve as organizational leaders
  • Processes and procedures allow application flexibility whenever possible
  • Guidelines are used when strict procedure adherence is not required
  • Leaders and supervisors are closely aligned
  • Leaders define overarching organizational priorities and performance policies
  • Supervisors independently resolve tactical issues
  • Relationship driven workplace environment
  • Supervisors control information
  • Standards set by leaders, when and how to apply them is set at the supervisor level
  • Supervisors set tactical, day-to-day priorities and schedules and coordinate workgroups
  • Standards and expectations are established by leaders with supervisor input
  • Organizational results are monitored by well-structured metrics
  • Standards and expectations govern most/all activities
  • Goals and expectations well known
  • Leaders hold supervisors accountable for individual contributors who do not following rules
  • Low tolerance for supervisors not enforcing rules
  • Supervisors interpret standards and expectations and when and how the apply
  • Careful selection of supervisors
  • Technologies are used to aid process implementation and performance monitoring

Benefits

  • Supervisors empowered to resolve local issues
  • Local decision-making enables more rapid situational response
  • Supervisors aligned with management
  • Ownership and accountability at the supervisory level
  • Cooperation and teamwork between supervisors
  • Supervisory initiative consistent with established standards and expectations
  • Elevated job satisfaction among supervisors

Risks

  • Some diminished unity in direction setting
  • Loss of supervisory knowledge, skills, and experience
  • Workgroup performance is limited by ability of supervisors
  • Supervisory expectations do not always align with established rules and standards
  • Inconsistent rules across the business and between workgroups
  • Endless rule making by supervisors
  • Exceptions to rules and standards are not aligned with business objectives
  • Ad hoc approaches to solve problems that do not fit established rules
  • Inconsistent worker adherence to rules and standards
  • Performance sustainability dependent upon supervisor stability (positional and organizational retention)

Risk Mitigators

  • Careful selection, promotion, and recruitment of supervisors
  • Supervisors selected based on leadership and technical ability
  • Leadership training provided to supervisors
  • Ongoing executive coaching and mentoring of supervisors
  • Employment of comprehensive set of program performance measures to early identify deviations and defects

Note that organizational execution of one or more culture characteristic tenants may be flawed. In these instances, elimination of the deficiency often serves to significantly improve performance.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”61114, 25542, 25653″]

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StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures How Work Gets Done Model

Corporate Cultures – Individual Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment

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The Individual Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment represents a culture that is moving toward greater consistency in action if not action initiation. These organizations are still largely guided by local controls and individual contributors and lack the more rigorous oversight and activity reinforcement realized in supervisory and leader led companies. Thus, these organizations gain a limited amount of increased consistency while still maintaining a high level of innovation and flexibility.[wcm_restrict plans=”61097, 25542, 25653″]

The following characteristics, benefits, risks, and risk mitigators are representative of the Individual Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment.

StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures How Work Gets Done Model

Figure 1 – Individual Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment

Characteristics

  • Executives and senior managers focus on business strategy and organizational culture
  • Focus on individual activities, standards and expectations adherence, and results achievement
  • Trust in the individual
  • Processes and procedures allow application flexibility whenever possible
  • Guidelines are used when strict procedure adherence is not required
  • Individuals embrace established policies and procedures
  • Leaders define overarching organizational priorities and performance policies
  • Supervisors and individual contributors collaborate to make day-to-day decisions
  • Supervisors and individual contributors collaborate to resolve tactical issues
  • Supervisors and individual contributors collaborate to establish day-to-day work priorities
  • Hierarchical organizational design led by supervisors and foreman/lead techs
  • Supervisors establish detailed performance standards and expectations with worker input
  • Organizational results are monitored by well-structured metrics
  • Standards and expectations govern most/all activities
  • Individuals have the freedom to take action within procedural guidelines and determine what work gets done and when consistent with established priorities
  • Individuals determine when and how to apply the performance standards
  • Rewards systems reinforce leadership defined goals, standards and expectations driven by all levels
  • Performance standards and expectations are well known and understood
  • Careful selection of people
  • Technologies are used to aid process implementation and performance monitoring

Benefits

  • Individuals empowered to resolve problems consistent with established standards and expectations
  • Local decision-making enables rapid situational response
  • Focus on what is deemed important at the individual/local level
  • Elevated innovation at all levels of the organization
  • Individual contributor self-reliance and self-motivation with little need for constant supervision or direction
  • Collaboration and teamwork between individual contributors
  • Deep respect for other people and their contribution to the organization
  • Accountability for adherence to established standards and expectations
  • Job satisfaction among supervisors and individual contributors

Risks

  • Variations in priority setting by individuals misaligns organizational effort and reduces effectiveness
  • Action initiation inconsistencies cause varying results
  • Supervisors are unable to deal with controversial issues
  • Alienated supervisors
  • Consistency of standards application between work groups and across the organization
  • Individual accountability for results; “I was following the rules.”
  • Ad hoc approaches to problem solving for issues that don’t fit within the rules
  • Endless rule-making – a rule for everything
  • Numerous exceptions to the rules
  • Long-term performance sustainability dependent upon workforce stability (positional and organizational retention)
  • Loss of knowledgeable, skilled, and experienced personnel greatly diminishes organizational capability and capacity
  • Changing business goals not readily translated into changed knowledge and skills

Risk Mitigators

  • Rules and standards coupled to organizational goals in order to drive consistency
  • Performance monitoring mechanisms (metrics and reports) contain clearly defined action triggers to align action initiation to organizational goals
  • Employ a comprehensive set of program performance measures to early identify deviations and defects
  • Identification of required knowledge and skills close to the work
  • Careful selection and recruitment of employees consistent with work requirements
  • Rigorously capture, document, and communicate mission critical organizational knowledge

Note that organizational execution of one or more culture characteristic tenants may be flawed. In these instances, elimination of the deficiency often serves to significantly improve performance.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”61097, 25542, 25653″]

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StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures How Work Gets Done Model

Corporate Cultures – Supervisor Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment

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The Supervisor Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment represents a somewhat centrally controlled environment. This culture set benefits from greater local control than the leader initiated organization while still maintaining a degree of oversight that enhances centralized direction setting as compared with individual initiated cultures. However, the general lack of guiding processes or standards allows a great deal of operational flexibility; limiting the degree of consistency gained by these organizations.[wcm_restrict plans=”61119, 25542, 25653″]

The following characteristics, benefits, risks, and risk mitigators are representative of the Supervisor Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment.

StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures How Work Gets Done Model

Figure 1 – Supervisor Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment

Characteristics

  • Executives and senior managers focus on business strategy and organizational culture
  • Focus on workgroup results achievement
  • Culture of ‘we do it like professionals’
  • Processes and procedures allow application flexibility whenever possible
  • Guidelines are used when strict procedure adherence is not required
  • Trust in people is balanced by a thorough understanding of their job requirements and limits of authority
  • Leaders define overarching organizational priorities and performance policies
  • Leaders and supervisors are closely aligned
  • Supervisors and individual contributors work to build consensus
  • Standards set by leaders, when and how to apply them is set at the supervisor level
  • Supervisors set tactical, day-to-day priorities and schedules and coordinate workgroups
  • Relationship driven workplace environment
  • Policies, values, and professional ethics are defined
  • Organizational results are monitored by informal and sometimes ad hoc metrics
  • Supervisors exercise a degree of autonomy
  • Goals and expectations well known
  • Individuals determine when and how to apply the performance standards
  • Rewards systems reinforce leadership defined goals, standards and expectations
  • Supervisors determine what skills and knowledge is required
  • Careful selection of supervisors and individual contributors
  • Informal technologies are used to aid process implementation and performance monitoring

Benefits

  • Supervisors empowered to resolve local issues
  • Local decision-making enables more rapid situational response
  • Supervisors tend to be aligned with management
  • Ownership and accountability at the supervisory level
  • Cooperation and teamwork between supervisors
  • Supervisory initiative consistent with organizational values
  • High job satisfaction among supervisors
  • Self-checking of work performed
  • Personal ownership of work and the company
  • Deep respect for other people and their contribution to the organization
  • Elevated innovation

Risks

  • Inconsistency between work groups as to when action is taken
  • Important occurrences missed and action not taken in the absence of the supervisor
  • Workgroup performance is limited by ability of supervisors
  • Over-reliance on supervisory direction hinders effective work execution/productivity
  • Supervisors lose sight of the leadership team’s expectations and goals
  • Misuse of supervisory discretion
  • Performance sustainability tied to supervisor stability
  • Supervisors and workers become uncoupled
  • Loss of knowledgeable, skilled, and experienced personnel greatly diminishes organizational capability and capacity
  • Changing business goals not readily translated into changed knowledge and skills
  • Lack of formal measurement systems hinders recognition of when performance deviates from expectation

Risk Mitigators

  • Careful selection, promotion, and recruitment of supervisors
  • Supervisors selected based on leadership and technical ability
  • Leadership training provided to supervisors
  • Identification of required knowledge and skills close to the work
  • Rigorously capture, document, and communicate mission critical organizational knowledge
  • Employ a comprehensive set of program performance measures to early identify deviations and defects

Note that organizational execution of one or more culture characteristic tenants may be flawed. In these instances, elimination of the deficiency often serves to significantly improve performance.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”61119, 25542, 25653″]

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StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures How Work Gets Done Model

Corporate Cultures – Supervisor Initiated, Documented Processes Controlled Environment

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The Supervisor Initiated, Documented Processes Controlled Environment represents a move toward standardized, centralized control. This culture set benefits from greater local control than the leader initiated organization while still maintaining a degree of oversight that enhances standardization and centralized direction setting. Subsequently, organizations where work activities are supervisor initiated and controlled by documented processes tend to exhibit a very limited degree of creativity and flexibility.[wcm_restrict plans=”61109, 25542, 25653″]

The following characteristics, benefits, risks, and risk mitigators are representative of the Supervisor Initiated, Documented Processes Controlled Environment.

StrategyDriven Corporate Cultures How Work Gets Done Model

Figure 1 – Supervisor Initiated, Documented Processes Controlled Environment

Characteristics

  • Strategic vision held by a few executives
  • Focus on standardization (organization, process, and technology), process compliance, and workgroup results achievement
  • Culture where supervisors are responsible for engaging and motivating the workforce
  • Trust in supervisors
  • Processes and procedures drive supervisors who drive individual contributor behaviors
  • Administrative procedure compliance is emphasized regardless of organizational benefit
  • Supervisors embrace established policies and procedures
  • Leaders define overarching organizational priorities and performance policies
  • Supervisors independently make day-to-day decisions
  • Supervisors independently resolve tactical issues
  • Supervisors set tactical, day-to-day priorities and schedules and coordinate workgroups
  • Robust organizational design (organizational structures, positional authorities, roles and responsibilities, job descriptions)
  • Organizational processes are well defined and documented
  • Organizational results and process performance are monitored by well-structured, highly refined metrics
  • Executives and senior managers hold supervisors accountable for process compliance
  • Procedures govern most/all activities
  • Supervisors hold individual workers accountable for process compliance
  • Supervisor driven rewards systems reinforce leadership defined goals, standards and expectations
  • Supervisors determine what skills and knowledge is required
  • Careful selection of supervisors
  • Integrated technologies are used extensively and to aid cross-functional process implementation and performance monitoring

Benefits

  • Supervisors empowered to resolve local issues
  • Local decision-making enables more rapid situational response
  • Elevated process driven execution consistency
  • Supervisors are well-aligned with leadership
  • Ownership and accountability at the supervisory level
  • Cooperation and teamwork between supervisors
  • Accountability for procedure compliance and results achieved
  • Job satisfaction among supervisors

Risks

  • Some inconsistency between work groups as to when action is taken
  • Loss of supervisory skills and knowledge resulting from strict procedural governance
  • Workgroup performance is limited by the ability of the supervisors
  • Long-term performance sustainability dependent upon supervisor stability (positional and organizational retention)
  • Knowledge, skills, and experiences of workers is not fully leveraged
  • Workers becoming alienated from managers

Risk Mitigators

  • Careful selection, promotion, and recruitment of supervisors
  • Supervisors selected based on leadership and technical ability
  • Leadership training provided to supervisors
  • Processes and performance monitoring mechanisms (metrics and reports) contain clearly defined action triggers to align action initiation to organizational goals
  • Use of skip-level meetings to ensure the ideas of individual contributors are unfiltered

Note that organizational execution of one or more culture characteristic tenants may be flawed. In these instances, elimination of the deficiency often serves to significantly improve performance.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”61109, 25542, 25653″]

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