Organizational Culture in ITBY: DEAN WINTERS

So What is Organizational Culture?

Well for one thing, there’s no way you haven’t been part of one An organization’s culture is its values, its rites and rituals, and the ways

that people involved interact with each other Some organizations believe that their culture is just as important, if not

more, as the actual product or service they provide Two different models for good cultures are Deal and Kennedy’s “Strong

Cultures” and Peters and Waterman’s “Excellent Cultures”

The Two Models

Deal and Kennedy’s “Strong Cultures” involves four pieces: Clear Communicated Values Heroes Rites and Rituals Communication Systems

Peters and Waterman’s “Excellent Cultures” has 8 parts: Bias for action Close relations to customers Autonomy and entrepreneurship Productivity through people Hands on, value driven Stick to the knitting Simple form, lean staff Simultaneous loose-tight properties

So How Does This Relate to IT?

Honestly I’m sure you already know how it relates to IT, but I’ll tell you anyways

Depending on the culture of an organization or department, the overall success could rise or fall based on the product or service provided

I’m actually going to use Google as an example, since they’re so successful in the technology field

Google’s Culture

Part of the reason behind Google’s success is from their culture From the beginning, Google’s goal has been “To organize the world’s

information and to make it universally accessible and useful.” The result was a blank page that contained only a search bar and a logo This was very different from their competitors who were aiming to make

money from advertising and pop up ads, which the company felt were annoying to the end-user

Comfort and Informational Backup

Jobs at Google are extremely difficult to obtain and the hiring process is not unlike that of a university, but with good reason

The working conditions are kind of like a five-star hotel where you build, create, and work on new ideas

They have a strict policy in meetings where employees are not allowed to say “I think that…” and are instead made to say “the data suggest…” or something along the same lines

This encourages their employees to think critically and do research on their topics so they can have informed responses to the problems they face

Innovation

Google is a huge contributor to innovative technology, but risk doesn’t always give reward

This can be seen when a vice president in charge of marketing made a mistake that cost the company millions of dollars, but what resulted is what’s strange

One of the top minds at Google, Larry Page, congratulated her for making the mistake and noted that he would rather run a company where they’re moving too quickly and doing too much, rather than being too cautious and doing too little

This attitude for acting fast and accepting the results is likely the reason why they are so successful compared to their competitor companies like Microsoft and Yahoo!

Working in Teams

Another place that reflects Google’s culture is in their decision making process

Choices are made by consensus that results from employees using rational persuasion and data

From the monumental choices, to the little dilemmas, they reach conclusions in teams, rather than one senior opinion making all the decisions

Offices are also in an open setting to encourage employees to interact with each other to reach conclusions, instead of doing something entirely by themselves

The Hiring Process

Google is known for asking potential employees strange questions that don’t normally get asked in interviews that cause the interviewee to actually think about the answer

Candidates are also sometimes required to write an essay about what they will do once they get the job as part of the application process (ringing any bells with the university similarity?)

Recently they’ve started putting up billboards that have brain teasers that encourage potential candidates to look online and complete more brain teasers in order to weed out “Googley” candidates

Compared to the Models

Google contains most, if not all of the parts from the two organizational culture models from the previous slides

The only one that isn’t really prevalent is the “Excellent Cultures” part of close relations to customer because I honestly have never interacted with a Google employee and I don’t hear of it happening really ever

I doubt Google’s culture will stay completely the same since being static is kind of against everything they do and that’s a central part of cultures, they’re constantly changing

Questions

What’s the link to those brain teaser applications?(I’m too lazy to actually google them myself)

Is an organizational culture like Google’s the future of organizations? Will Google end up ruling the world with their amazing search engine

and awesome internet speeds? Will I go to Taco Bell after I post this? Tune in next time and your questions might be answered!

Bibliography

Noviantoro, T. (2014, September 4). ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN GOOGLE INC. Retrieved February 15, 2016, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140904061228-154884582- organizational-culture-in-google-inc