Organizational Culture and Change

Organizational Culture and Change:

I have come to conclude that the two concepts; organisation culture and organisation change affect each other in unique ways. In this discussion the description of organisation culture by Mott (2008) which asserts that “a group’s culture is made of the practices, beliefs and values that help create how it functions” will be used.

How does organisation change affects organisation culture?

Yukl (2009) as reflected by Hickman (2010, p. 326) addressed a conflict that I have had for a long time on organisation culture, which is “underlying beliefs” are not necessarily the same as those outwardly promoted by an organisation. Many bureaucracies publicly promote, for instance, open door policy for employees to increase feedback and transparency within the organisation, when in essence, such staff members (SM) may never be free to openly walk into their leaders' offices to discuss matters affecting their lives at the work place. In this sense therefore, the true organisational culture to me is the underlying belief as opposed to the espoused values.

The second learning which again I found very useful from Yukl (2009) was that “underlying beliefs representing the culture of …organisation are learnt responses to problems” that affect the organisation from the outside and the inside; Yukl (2009) called this survival in the external environment and problems of internal integration.  The outside problems has to do with the business or purpose of an organisation while the internal problems have to do with recruitment, selection, placement, motivations and reward system, punitive measures and so forth and how all these are applied to an individual employee. The relationship of organisation change to culture in this regard is such that any form of change (in the internal or external environment) results into change in culture as well. This is because new changes pose new requirements for adaptation to organisations externally and internally and as organisations respond and adapt to these new challenges, a new culture is built.

What would be the role of leadership in this?

In my opinion, problems of internal integration are largely attributable to the ‘behaviour’ of leadership in any given organisation and the kinds of undertakings, arrangements, structures and cultural forms/symbols they put in place. Because of the fact that leaders provide the direction, vision in an organisation, they tend to dictate on how the vision(s) would be implemented, thereby setting new cultures and ways of working in an organisation. Any form of change leaders will cause with respect to any of the above elements of internal integration will require adjustments on the side of followers (workers) as they respond to them. Leadership therefore in a way facilitates or influences organisational culture, the degree of influence however varies. A leader may introduce new symbols such as lunch hour prayers, sharing a birthday cake for every staff whose birthdays fall within a working day (influencing culture) in a new organisation or one being established easily compared to trying to do the same in a district local government - so large and has been in existence for ages.

How does organisation culture affect organisation change?

There are many examples where efforts towards organisation change has failed due to what Mott (2008) describes as ‘cultural resistance’ (p.89). I have seen that in institutions where cultural values are strong, any change not in tandem with the beliefs and values of stakeholders is opposed but where proposed changes are congruent with the culture, it is easy. An example would be in large entities where staffs, through their representations (chairs of staff associations, unions etc), are part of decisions making bodies/committees.

Concluding on this therefore, while organisation change and culture affect one another in ways that need to be studied further, the role of a leader in all this is still critical.

 

Finding the Balance between a Great and an Effective Leader: An example

Finding the Balance between a Great and an Effective Leader: An example

There are so many skills, qualities and characteristics that guarantee effectiveness and great leadership. Not all may be present within an individual leader, it is however important that a leader possesses some critical ones in my opinion. The qualities most important to me include the drive for results; commitment and ‘knowledgeability’ of an individual leader. For a leader to be considered of character, such a leader must be decisive, very balanced in thoughts and decision; and feeds back or communicates effectively.  With such qualities and characteristics, such a leader would most certainly possess skills sets that include: - interpersonal skills, ability to empower and delegate functions, positive encouraging spirit and many others that may not come to mind now.

I worked with some really great and inspiring personalities who were often times not so effective in leading teams and I have also worked with effective leaders who were not often considered that inspirational or great by the teams they lead. Finding the balance between being a great and an effective leader is not always easy. My current boss - Ms. Jean (not real name) is one such rare person who tries to balance out on the qualities, character and skills that propels her forward as an effective and great leader within the country office.

Ms. Jean is passionate about service delivery and working for and with children. She is currently engaged in building community structures and strengthening 56 local governments in central and western Uganda to ensure that they deliver results for the children and women in this part of the Uganda so that the children remain safe, alive and learning. She has worked in this organisation for over 20 years. Currently, she supervises 11 staff; out of which 7 are senior program specialists with diverse backgrounds - water engineers, child protection specialists, medical doctors, evaluation specialists...

Working with such a number of professionals necessitates the Ms. Jean possesses those qualities, character and skills highlighted above. Because of her drive for results she has not only instituted a check list of indicators that contributes directly to the office annual reports and the millennium development goals (MDGs) reports for Uganda, but has ensured each team member reports on this on a monthly basis. To do this, Jean organised all the 11 staffs into ‘task teams’, with a group responsible for a certain number of local governments and another group responsible for the compilation of monthly data. This sounds tedious and monotonous and mind you, it is only one of the several roles that the team have to play as an office. What she did then was to introduce a form of recognition to best written and analysed reports.

A monthly  office meeting is conducted once every month where such recognition is announced. A tin of exotic cookies and a big silver star awaits the best report and the second best report gets to have a smaller blue star; these are usually pinned on the wall next to the performing officers for all to see the ‘star of the month’ and the individual officer gets to have it until the next reporting period. I am sure someone might be saying “this method works in a kindergarten”. Hold it; the boss has not only achieved her results, but kept the warmth and the team together. The fact that this process is on every month, regardless of her presence in office or not, is an indication of how far Ms. Jean can stretch her commitment for what she believes in. I must tell you, no other section of office within the country office has ever been able to meet this target consistently as her team did since 2011.

She is very knowledgeable, and one can assess this by the fact that she is able to effectively supervise the team in spite of different areas of specialisation and work (child protection, maternal and child health, paediatric HIV/AIDS, water engineers, administrators etc.). She critiques all of the different team members satisfactorily and the team remains motivated.

She has developed trust and delegated most of her functions at the district local government levels to respective specialists. She delegates with full authority (empowers) because she is able to quickly expand and learn new roles herself, and not worried that someone is taking over her space.

As a person she is very objective and understanding of personal limitations of staff and provides regular feed back to their work. For instance, she has never failed to meet the target of conducting 2 performance evaluation discussions per year per staff for all the 11 staffs.
As I therefore conclude, one can clearly see that this boss certainly possesses all the skills mentioned above such as interpersonal skills, ability to empower and delegate functions, positive encouraging spirit. To be a great and effective leader, one needs the qualities, the character and the skills to deliver.

Leadership and Management: Distinctions

“Distinctions: Leadership and Management”

Leadership and management are two concepts with a thin line separating them. Many times scholars and practitioners confuse them. I could classify leadership in 3 different ways along the human historical lane and level of influence; in fact Russell (2011 September 7) a former class mate, excellently commented in his posting in a class that “leadership has evolved from influencing kings and queens like in the days of Columbus, to influencing Generals and Armies, like in Lincoln's day, to influencing and leading millions of people, not just in one's own nation but in many nations across the world, such as what Franklin D. Roosevelt did” – so there was leadership of the era preceding the wars and the great revolutions in Europe (before the 17^th century); associated with kings and queens, leadership of the 18^th century associated with the generals and commanders and now the 21^st century leadership associated with people. It is important to note that leadership can be formal, shared or informal. Formal leadership is if a person is elected, has inherited or was appointed to a position with a title. Informal leadership, as I described in my discussion post last week, is a good example of shared leadership, members do not get to inherit positions, and neither do they get to be elected or appointed to any position. Simple people simply rise as occasions demands ‘lead and later retreat back to follow other leaders’ again. In this paper, I will discuss ‘successful’ formal leadership. My understanding of leadership in this sense is influenced by Blunt, R.’s article (Ray, 2008) from which I now understand that successful leadership isn’t just about focusing on ‘the desire of the people’ supervised. It is a feeling inside our hearts particularly about what we want people and our followers to remember us for. What did I do to make a difference or cause change in whose life through the organizations I led?   - Is pretty much a question that preoccupies a successful leader. According to Blunt (2008), aspirants of ‘true successful leaders must build value of others that come behind them’. A ‘successful leader’ must derive his/her pride from successful attempts at developing skill sets, emotional intelligence and interest of his followers, team or the people he guides.   

Management on the other hand, as Roger J. Plachy (2009) puts it, is about organizational needs. He defines it as being able to identify and meet an organizational business, ‘purpose’, through understanding existing organizational ‘needs’, defining resources that would be necessary to meet these ‘needs’ vis-à-vis setting clear targets (‘goals and objectives’) that match the ‘resources’ and ‘purpose’ already defined. There are two dimensions to being a good manager – aside from managing the team to translate vision into action, a manager must manage him/herself too, he or she must take time and reflect about who he or she is and how he/she can use his/her characters to manage others. The self becomes a tool of some sort. If the self is a tool, then one must equally understand this tool. Professor Linda A. Hill of the Harvard Business School introduces a third element in addition to people and self management; “manage your net work” (Nobel, 2011). She insists that ‘being the boss’ is not just about managing “the people who report to you, but that one must manage the ‘context’ in which” the followers ‘reside’ less the followers/team would not be successful.

Most definitions of management portrays it as ‘formal authority’ and most managers believe so – far from it; “It's a common mistake to think management is defined by formal authority—the ability that comes with a title to impose your will on others… formal authority is a useful but limited tool” (Nobel, 2011, p. 2). Professor Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback provided limits of formal authority: doesn’t elicit ‘compliance’ at all; often followers will ‘disagree’ with you; followers may have a different world view of authority and possibly may not like to be ‘bossed around’ (p. 2).

In comparing leadership and management, the article by Roger J. Plachy (2009) says it very clearly. One finds that while a leader ‘states a vision, creates excitements’ around the vision; a manager directs and sometimes forces action to accomplish that vision. Leaders will involve people in the process of achieving purpose; and managers will simply fulfill that purpose (action). In terms of authority, while leaders derive their authority from their followers, manager’s authority is granted by the organization. In all these though, one can quickly notice the complimenting role they each play to achieve the organizational goal. Leadership must depend on managership activities to achieve organizational ‘vision and values’. On the other hand, a manager must depend on leadership to ‘build rapport’. Perhaps this explains why in most organizations, the person is one, he leads and manages at the same time.

In the early 2000s, I was appointed a head of office in one of the field offices for a British charity named ACORD (Agency for Cooperation in Research and Development). Aside from the line management function I had to lead a team of eleven men and women. When conducting line management function such as performance reviews, allocating tasks or following up on previous agreements, staff did not feel easy with me, with others literally accusing me of singling them out. It was worse, if one made a mistake be it during the definitions of what needed to be done or selecting persons to fit for which job. I consulted on policy issues – for instance, the work place policy on HIV/AIDS. I had noticed how much staff time was wasted going to the hospital, funerals and realized staff needed to be helped by the organization in order to keep up with the pace of performance required by the organization. In such meetings and consultations, staffs were more energized and wanted to contribute to the discussions more than when we have to talk about work itself. I then had to use more of motivational speeches to get staff to rally around ideas that needed to be implemented. I realized management roles were more difficult especially when one had to communicate the difficult things like “I regret to inform you that your contract will not be renewed” as opposed to leadership roles where one would say something like “Your children are watching you, your people are watching you, ACORD looks up to you, why wouldn’t you complete your tasks”.

When I look back now, I can only conclude that leadership is political while management is administrative. From my experience again at this agency (ACORD), the distinction between leadership and management is one that occurs momentarily really, pretty fast. The two concepts complement each other and necessary at the same time in successful operation and change within any organization.

  

Reference

Nobel, C. (2011, January 17). Being the Boss. RESEARCH & IDEAS , pp. 1-3.

Ray, B. (2008). The successes of Leaders. Retrieved September 15, 2011, from GovLeaders: http://govleaders.org/successes_print.htm

Russell, P (2011, September 11). Leadership [Online forum content].  Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=5680834&Survey=1&47=8720054&ClientNodeID=404822&coursenav=1&bhcp=1