The diagram shows the main areas of concentration for developing your strategy. Let's start with organizational culture and then move through the other areas. The Alt-Weeklies (AW from here out) have usually shared the attitude that dailies are big dumb oafs because their organizations are sluggish and incapable of changing or innovating. Like most mature businesses they do suffer from organizational lethargy. And they are gradually awakening to this reality as they watch their profits slip away along with key parts of their business. Some of them are making progress initiating new projects, some aren't. But just because AW are younger and more vibrant in many ways doesn't mean they're immune from the same stagnation in organizational creativity and innovation.
All the folks I know in the AW industry are mostly hard-working, earnest entrepreneurs. The biggest failing I observe is that most AW organizations perform below standards of excellence when it comes to getting things done effectively. Often the price is undue wear and tear on staff and finances. Organizational culture sets the pace for getting things done and how inspired you feel to get up every day and do it again.
Your cultural habits and behaviors determine how you're going to respond to markets and changes. You can have the best strategy possible and still fail to execute properly to reap the full benefits of the strategy. The strategic development process itself is determined by the quality of culture.
The Three Management Structures for Organizations
This table describes the three ways that companies are governed: hierarchy, heterarchy and responsible autonomy. While hierarchy has reined as the most common structure since human history has been recorded, heterarchal structures are emerging as more and more businesses recognize the benefits. In truth, most companies are a blend with responsible autonomy as the smallest portion (largely in use in R&D driven environments).
The main thing I want to emphasize about culture is that it both reflects and determines a lot about where an organization is going and how it will get there. In order to create a strategy and execute it a business enterprise needs systems and levels of coordination (communication, leadership) that propel it towards success.
The table below shows a distinction between two blends: 1) dominant hierarchy/aims at results over people concerns and 2) heterarchy/hierarchy blend/balances results with people concerns. There are of course an infinite number of permutations and blends, but this is one example for contrast of two of the most common found in AW organizations.
Culture itself is somewhat abstract and exists whether or not it is consciously developed. Just as an individual has values and beliefs in what reality is, and that in turn determines his behavior, so is it true for an organization. The dynamic is more complex because it's a collective of many individuals with different views of reality. Leadership styles, use of power, delegation of authority and others (shown in the next table) define culture and the common ways employees behave to get things done.
I've used a management and staff training program called Management by Responsibility (MBR) for over twenty years. It's the most effective way I've found to alter culture because it focuses on behavior and action. Many companies have embraced the concept of mission and values statements to inform everyone about culture, but without action they are just lofty statements for wish fulfillment. You change culture by changing the behavior of its members through what they do, how they do it and how it's coordinated. The following tables show the MBR grid of management: seven dimensions of functioning and five levels that represent the orientation to those dimensions. A similar grid exists for staff and individual functioning.
There are four slides which you can download and open in PDF.
You'll notice two icons of the two most common levels of functioning. Michael Scott, as portrayed in the TV series, The Office, is the typical conformist manager. That's why we find it so damn funny. We know him! He works with us. We're familiar with his style and while it's funny to watch from the safe distance of a TV program, it's not so funny to actually work with anyone in this mode. Trump represents the achievement level. A safe distance from this asshole is our aim in life.
Most managers function at more than one level across the dimensions. It's important to know where you and other managers in your organization fit and then set about making the changes to function at higher levels over time. The MBR program defines a process for doing that.
Organizational culture development is an ongoing process that takes years to establish and elevate. As a matter of fact it's a continuous process of learning that really never ends, it just gets easier after a certain point of development. It's accomplished in tandem with all the other things you have to get done in the course of running a business. It's needed now more than ever if you hope to stimulate the highest level of innovation and entrepreneurship required to be successful.
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