Workplace culture quadrant.

A framework for workplace culture.

Every People Manager is aware of the fact that culture is all about values; the values espoused, the values practiced and the values celebrated. But how do we celebrate trust and honesty as values? How do practice them? Well, here are some answers and solutions to understand organisation culture for its effective implementation and impact at transforming workplaces.

Let us begin with accepting the fact that every organisation has objectives to establish and achieve; whether you are part of a non-governmental org or a sales-driven profit churning entity, if the culture does not enhance and improve upon the objectives, it is not aiding as a behavioral tool. Better scrap the culture survey and save some money rather!

The second aspect is the fact that you do not want the same values in every job role; that would be a disaster! If the Risk Manager trusts the business guy, it won’t be long for the business to wind up. Hence the role of values are often misinterpreted or misunderstood. Be careful going forward if you notice trust as a value in some org bulletin board or website.

All organisation objectives could be clubbed under the four quadrants of AISI; Action, Intellect, Social & Influence.

It is the application of the values across the four quadrants which needs measurement based on role and impact for creating tangible differences in the realisation of org objectives. Else, (as I have already mentioned) it is a waste of time and resources.

AISI Culture Quadrant

The organisation to achieve its objectives needs to push a bias for action in certain areas like production and operations, intellect in its research, manufacturing and technology, social bias in its marketing and sales efforts plus action and influence in its customer acquisition and brand strategies along with talent management. This is achieved through the understanding of values and how it factors in enhancing a particular quadrant and balances lowered biases towards a non-effective quadrant. For example, too much of intellectual bias in production or operations can delay and lower the rate of productivity.

What can we do about it? To begin with, measure the individual values and the motivation behind the same. Often it is presumed that employees will align with the prescribed values without explaining the purpose behind the alignment. This is where HR practitioners need to put in some work.

Human motivation is driven by self needs and group preferences. This tribal mindset cannot be wished away, and humans align towards a certain set of values because of personal cultural influences while align with groups to profess their social preferences. Group preferences are hygiene factors, and need to exist without any additional benefits, like car tyres. Without the tyres, a car doesn’t move. But how many cars are sold because they offer good tyres?

Personal motivation is what drives our internal zeal to perform and scale the self and the team. This is most important to be calibrated within the leadership team, at the least. The motivation could emerge from intrinsic factors leading to a higher demand for autonomy whereas extrinsic factors could be driven by factors of success and reputation. Remember, you need a healthy mix of extrinsic and intrinsic values to drive objectives, based on the role and level of hierarchy within the organisation.

Once measured, employees can be trained and tempered through coaching tips to align with select values towards a particular quadrant. A Sales Head with high intrinsic hygiene bias would end up being highly number-driven while neglecting the impact of social cohesion and motivation required for the team to flourish and achieve. Just remember, there are no shortcuts to managing humans. If that was possible, governments would have hired and put in people practices as a law!

At Pexitics, we measure Culture for what it is supposed to measure; the gaps in objective achievements. If you want to find out more, there can be no better time than now as we are running a special campaign to cover 4 assessments and 4 surveys for each employee as an annual package to deliver a Lifecycle score for each employee. If that sounds exciting, do get in touch by writing to me at reuben@pexitics.com

Till then, do read my other interesting bits on People Management and People Scaling for your organisational objectives.