#69: ‘Good’ or a ‘bad’ culture?

Would you say that your organization has a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ culture? Don’t bother. It makes no sense to evaluate a culture as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. What matters is whether it is effective at producing the outcome you want.

Organizational culture is effective if employees can do their work without worrying about the support of colleagues. This is called horizontal effectiveness. You have it when different individuals can blindly co-ordinate their activities and save on communication costs.

Vertical effectiveness happens when followers can guess what to do without having to wait for instructions. When this happens, you save on the costs associated with delegating and monitoring.

Always remember that culture is simply the way we do things here. If you are not clear about the outcome you want, then the way you do things here might instead result in a lot of bad things happening around here.


I’m james@nonsenseatwork.com

Copyright: 2007 James Henry McIntosh

James can be heard on Public Radio, 88.9 FM WCVE, Richmond VA.
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