Friday, April 17, 2015

Organizational Culture

Today's discussion of Zappos is a fun way to get our discussion of organizational culture started. Zappos certainly has a unique way of working together. And when we're talking about culture in any organization, that's really what we're talking about: how we work together, or what some authors phrase as, "how things done around here".

There are a lot of different definitions of organizational culture. Let me offer a simple one: organizational culture is the beliefs, values, and customs or habits shared among organization members. These characteristics are often visible not only in our conversation and problem solving, but are physically visible in artifacts within the organization. Organizational culture is relatively stable, but it can change and does evolve as the organization solves problems, and these problem solving methods are accepted as valid (see Schein, 2010).

Cameron and Quinn's (2011) competing values framework provides us with a model for thinking about these beliefs, values and customs, and the impact various culture types can have on innovation, speed, and organizational sustainability. The first five minutes of this video provides a helpful introduction to the competing values framework.



Your posts captured some of the beliefs, values and customs at Zappos, and even some of the artifacts (e.g., the open and highly decorated work space). See Michael's post for a thorough discussion of why Zappos' culture might be classified as "clan" according to the competing values framework. Lucas, Rob and Ricky's posts help stretch our thinking, noting that there appears to be elements of the Zappos culture that fall outside the clan quadrant. We'll see on Monday that company cultures are rarely exclusive to one quadrant. As the video notes, each quadrant offers some value to the organization. The key, as Nuebert and Dyck (2014) point out, is to ensure our culture aligns with our customer/stakeholder expectations, and our business strategy.

We've looked at some interesting organizational cultures this semester. Earlier we took a peek at Ideo. Now Zappos. How would you like to work at these companies? A number of you would, but Joel, Lucas, Ricky and Ryan observe in their discussions that these organizational cultures may not be a fit for everybody, depending on personal work style, etc. That is certainly true. Let me also challenge us to consider being open to alternative organizational cultures and the value of each of the quadrants. Those of who prefer a more internal focus, or perhaps predictability and control, may find our organizations in need of the innovation offered by adhocracy in order to survive. If that's the case, how do we make that transition as an organization and as individuals? We'll talk about that more on Monday.  :-)

References

Cameron, K.S & Quinn, R.E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Neubert, M. & Dyck, B. (2014). Organizational behavior. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Schein, E. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

You Are a Leader

Take a few minutes to read Dr. Kathy Ann Hernandez's reflection on John Quincy Adams' statement about leaders and leadership.


Friday, February 27, 2015

Susan Cain on the Power of Introverts

Hello to all of the introverts and extroverts in our class this semester! Take a few minutes to watch this TED talk by Susan Cain from 2012. Cain provides insights for all of us to consider in conjunction with our own Jung typology test results and our study of Liswood (2010). Enjoy!




Nonverbal Communication

Professor Amy Cuddy (Harvard Business School) offers some interesting insights and science on the power of nonverbal communication, not only in what it communicates to others, but to ourselves.


Friday, January 30, 2015

Our Individual Attributes


Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Hi all. This week we have transitioned from our introduction to organizational behavior to diving into our first level of study: the individual. We have already taken two self-assessments, the individualism/collectivism self-assessment and the Jung typology test.

Thank you for your reflections on your Jung type. The website and our text both provide helpful information to interpret our results (we'll talk more about the IC self-assessment on Monday). As a group you are demonstrating very healthy critical thinking about assessment results. You are agreeing with the interpretation where it makes sense, and disagreeing where you have contrary data from your own experience. This will be an important habit to develop as we work through the semester.

None of the instruments or self-assessments we use this semester should be considered a definitive description of who you are; they do not define you. Rather, they should be used to shine some light and provide food for thought about our individual preferences and styles. Self-awareness is a key leadership attribute. We will employ these tools to build self-awareness, and facilitate choices about personal development. We'll also be using these tools to help us understand more about the impact of our personal styles and behaviors on those around us, and how that affects groups and organizational behavior.

Be sure to retain your results from this and future assessments as we will refer back to them throughout the semester, and you'll need them for your final paper.

By the way, here's an interesting tidbit from our Jung type indicator results: two-thirds of our class identified themselves as one of the extrovert types. Do some thinking over the weekend about the implications of this for our classroom interactions. We'll pick-up this question on Monday.

Until then, enjoy the weekend!