Workplace, Teams, & Culture

It has become accepted wisdom in the corporate world that at one time or another every business will be forced to make radical changes. In fact, there is a blossoming industry of consultants and advisors who are equipped to help companies execute and survive these inevitable upheavals. But the authors propose that there is a better way to ensure that your company doesn't get ripped apart by radical change: Make sure it never needs it. What CEOs don't realize, say the authors, is that they could prevent their businesses from confronting the risks of wholesale change if they knew enough to identify and make smaller changes before too much friction builds up inside the company. Leaders and their management teams must be alert to -- and willing to confront -- early signs that the company's internal culture is not consistent with how it used to be, or how the leadership thinks of it. Making preemptive moves is never easy, because the signs are subtle and do not show up in traditional financial metrics. Shoring up a company's sagging identity is almost never a financial priority on par with, say, buying a new piece of equipment. The authors explain which indicators CEOs should monitor and take seriously (turnover rates, for example, or changes in the profile of new hires) so that they can make rational decisions as they are warranted, rather than waiting until panic sets in and countless changes are unavoidable. Such incremental shifting poses its own challenges: It's hard to convince others to join the movement when the culture in question looks healthy, but doing so will spare the company from the tough task in the future of having to reinvent itself. Given the choice, wouldn't most leaders prefer a low-level struggle with change rather than a fierce smackdown?

Why are some employees adept at getting the information they need while others struggle to locate the right in-house experts?

The authors offer a framework that executives can use to ensure that their new visions for their businesses become more than just pipe dreams.

Success in innovation requires the ability to churn out successful growth businesses year after year.

Research shows that the most important factor for driving innovation is company culture.

Some successful innovations, such as the microwave oven and the dishwasher, were initially slow to achieve consumer acceptance. When consumers resist adopting an innovation because it requires them to alter established habits, the innovation is called a resistant innovation. The authors use a case study involving the diffusion of screwcap wine closures in three countries -- Australia, New Zealand and the United States -- to analyze strategies for marketing a resistant innovation. For winemakers, screwcap closures represent a solution to "cork taint," a quality problem that can be caused by poor-quality corks and that can affect wine flavor. But consumers have shown resistance to screwcap closures, associating them with cheap wines or preferring the tradition associated with cork. However, among wine consumers in Australia and New Zealand, screwcaps have now achieved widespread acceptance. But 2005 wine industry statistics showed that less than 5% of U.S. wineries used screwcaps on fine wines. What is the reason for this difference? Earlier research in 2004 had found few differences between U.S. wine consumers and those in Australia and New Zealand -- except in their attitudes toward screwcaps. Garcia, Bardhi and Friedrich interviewed decision makers at more than two dozen wineries in the three countries. The authors concluded that winemakers in Australia and New Zealand had generally taken a different approach to marketing screwcap wine closures than United States wineries did. United States winemakers tended to employ vertical cooperation strategies that involved working with distribution channels to market screwcaps. New Zealand and Australian winemakers, on the other hand, used coopetition strategies involving cooperation among wineries, such as a New Zealand wine industry group called the New Zealand Wine Seal Initiative. The authors conclude that, under certain circumstances, coopetition strategies, which involve some cooperation among competitive firms, can be an effective strategy for marketing a resistant innovation. To determine whether or not coopetition is an appropriate strategy, the authors suggest that managers should analyze the marketing problem the new innovation faces and the resources available to address it; consider the kind of specific resources and knowledge that might be exchanged during coopetition; and evaluate the industry climate, including the role of trade associations and industry experts.

Leadership mandates tend to fall into one of three major categories: continuity (we should continue business as usual), good to great (we’ve been doing fine, but we need to do even better) and turnaround (we need to make dramatic changes to survive). Myriad problems can arise when an executive is given one leadership mandate while others are operating under a different, conflicting set of directives. Such stealth mandates are no-win situations, leading to the executive constantly butting heads with his or her boss, colleagues and others in the organization. To identify the true leadership mandate for a position, executives need to ask three crucial questions about the business unit they lead: (1) What needs to be changed within the next 12 months? (2) What needs to be honored or maintained during the next 12 months? (3) What must be avoided at all costs? Different constituencies should be queried, including key customers, and each of the questions should elicit a discussion about technology, business processes, culture and people. When executives discover that a stealth mandate is in play, they need to renegotiate mandates. One important goal is to establish realistic frameworks that will then become the basis for their future performance evaluation. Of course this is much easier said than done. But when an executive continues to operate in the shadow of a stealth mandate, he or she is setting himself or herself up to fail.

A company’s policies provide insight into its culture.

Even the most seasoned executives may have strongly opposing views about the wisest course of action for an organization, particularly given their diverse personal backgrounds or previous immersion in other corporate cultures. But such differences in approach don't necessarily lead to conflicts that are unproductive and damaging to an organization. To investigate such issues, the authors conducted a study of the organizational values of the top management teams in 31 companies. (As defined by the authors, organizational values are the objectives that an individual or group believes are important in running a business, such as industry leadership, employee welfare, and profit maximization.) The authors investigated two specific types of team conflict: task and relationship. Task conflict is characterized by substantive, issue-related differences in opinion. This type of disagreement can be beneficial when it ensures that a greater number of possible solutions are explored and that ideas are battle-tested within the group before significant resources are deployed. In contrast, relationship conflict -- characterized by disagreements over personalized, individually oriented matters -- is generally detrimental. It corrodes trust, hinders communication, slows the acceptance of ideas and leads to isolation and politicization among group members. When it comes to both task and relationship conflicts, the study results showed that behavior is driven by perception rather than reality. Specifically, the greater the perceived difference in organizational values among members of a top management team and their CEO the greater the conflict. Interestingly, any actual dissimilarity was not a factor. Thus, the bottom line is that many top management teams are unnecessarily encountering difficulties because of members' faulty assumptions. To lessen this tendency, the authors advise companies to consider the following: establish an appropriate atmosphere for the team; because perceptions become reality, understand and manage them; investigate the gaps between perceptions and reality; and act decisively to correct gross misperceptions.

During the last few decades, companies have moved away from hierarchical, integrated supply chains in favor of fragmented networks of strategic partnerships with external entities. This change has caused ripples throughout the old supply network and raised questions about the future. The authors consider the impact of vertical disintegration in large-scale supply networks, particularly in the textile and electronics industries. They focus on supply chain strategies that have been adopted by network players in order to accommodate for the changing governance and ownership structures. Their broad hypothesis is that the process of disintegration in many industries is not sustainable from a coordination and control viewpoint, and therefore will be followed by eventual reintegration - although it may take different forms in different industries. They discuss the expanded role of the systems integrator, which, in many cases, goes beyond critical coordination services and extends into issues related to control and governance of portions of the supply network. They also explore the challenges that systems integrators are likely to face, and they contrast two different models of coordination and governance that could be adopted by such players.