Firstly, let’s clarify what culture is?

Culture is embodied in the phrase “this is the way we do things around here”. More precisely, “what people perceive they have to do to fit in, be accepted and rewarded around here”. Culture is the sum of the behavioural norms of the workgroup, team, division or organisation. It is relatively common to have different cultures between teams or divisions within the one organisation. These are referred to as sub-cultures and they can range from being marginally different from the culture of the overall organisation to being quite radically different. This has implications for not only understanding an organisation’s culture but also for managing it effectively.

Why is culture important?

Have you ever tried to stay within the speed limit when everyone around you is driving at speeds well over the speed limit? The behavioural norms of a group can strongly influence the behaviour of the individual. Culture defines the behavioural norms (accepted behaviour) in a group, team, division or organisation. In turn, behaviour underpins the performance (what gets done, when it gets done and how it gets done) of the organisation and perceptions (reputation) of that organisation.

A Framework for Managing Culture

While managing culture requires a range of approaches and cannot simply be managed by dictating theculture you want, it is essentially about managing messages. The objective is to ensure messages are consistently conveyed through aligned behaviours (especially of key people), systems and symbols.

What is accountability?

The key concept is the notion of having a sense of ‘responsibility’ and a willingness to be ‘answerable’ to others and is the difference between a group and a team. In our experience, the most important factor in developing accountability is the quality of leadership and management (and this is the only aspect leaders or managers are really in ‘control’ of). Good leaders and managers generate high levels of accountability in their people.

Whilst organisations should plan to recruit the right people in terms of their willingness to be team players and be accountable; recruitment is only the starting point. The real key is what leaders and organisations do from that point onwards. Good recruits can be ‘lost’ in poorly lead organisations with unsupportive cultures. Many managers see accountability as being attributed to an individual’s values, therefore they blame the individual and underestimate their own role in creating an accountability culture. In doing this, a great opportunity to build a high performance organisation is missed.

Responsibility is not blame

It is important not to mistake responsibility for blame as they are diametrically opposed concepts. Where one exists the other will not remain.Responsibility is the ability to make a response,it is future and action focused. Blame is past focused and is more about the ego – isolating people, teaching them a lesson, point scoring or making them feel guilty/bad than it is about accountability. Guilt and fear is not a good basis for developing accountability.

A Framework for Building an Accountability Culture

We see the steps in building an accountability culture as
being:

1. Building trust as the foundation:

The four key elements of trust are

• Openness/transparency (giving and accepting feedback, transparency in decision making)

• Reliability (doing what you say you are going to do)

• Congruence (saying what you mean)

• Acceptance (acceptance of others and acceptance of differences).

2. Engage your people: meaningful involvement with alignment. Remember you can’t truly and sustainably motivate another person but you can engage them. It is through engagement that motivation will grow.

3. Ownership: once the first two elements are in place people start to ‘take’ ownership – they start to think and act like owners. (As this happens the future possibility for selling down equity, as part of the firm’s succession plan, becomes a reality).

The level of accountability is directly related to the level of trust, engagement and ownership that exists within an organisation. Certainly work at improving all levels simultaneously; however remember higher levels in the pyramid cannot progress any faster than the base they are built on, there are no short cuts. Without trust and engagement no performance measures and rewards will be particularly effective over the medium to long term – you cannot buy accountability. The key to building a culture of accountability is to find a way to lead people without ruling them.

Note: This article appears in the Institute of Chartered Accountants magazine “Charter” in October 2007.

Successful people have the ability to develop relationships that last. Building relationship requires the building of trust.  Mutual trust is a shared belief that you can depend on each other to achieve a common purpose.

More specifically,  trust defined as “the willingness of a party (trustor) to be vulnerable to the actions of another party (trustee) based on the expectation that the trustee will perform an action important to the trustor, regardless of the trustor’s ability to monitor or control the trustee.” People can sense how you feel toward them. By having a clear and positive attitude with them means they have a clear and positive attitude about you.

Building Relationships – Your Key Business Skills

A relationship is two people eliciting responses from each other. If you want a change in response, then you must change your own actions.As a business professional, you should ask yourself: “What business am I in?”.

Umair Haque is Director of the Havas Media Lab, strategic advisors who helps investors, entrepreneurs and firms drive radical management, business model and strategic innovation. On a piece he scribed for HBS recently he comments “We cannot organize tomorrow’s businesses – or economy – like yesterday’s.

What do I mean?  Simple. How should we organize and manage how firms interact with consumers? The Economist thinks it’s “creepy” but cool to trick consumers, because it’s profitable.

Is it?

Not a chance – as our research at the Lab notes, the fact is: companies who can build authentic, honest, open, collaborative relationships with consumers are significantly more profitable (and sustainably profitable) than companies who treat consumers deceptively, antagonistically, and manipulatively.

True power isn’t the power to manipulate. It’s the power to create. There is a world of difference between the two – that orthodox economics has yet to understand.”

One of the four GE Work-Out’s major goals is to build trust through encouraging employees to speak out critically inside the company about GE and the way they perform their jobs without negative consequences to their careers.Trust-based working relationships are an important source of your sustainable competitive advantage because trust is valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and often nonsubstitutable.  The level of trust a leader is able to garner from his/her employees is contingent upon the employee’s perceptions of the leader’s ability, benevolence, and integrity.

Customers will usually come back if:

Your keep your promises

You are willing to help

You inspire confidence

Your treat customers as individuals

You make it easy for customers to do business with you

All the physical aspects of your product or service give a favorable impression.

Building Relationship Capital is a critical skillset when growing your brand, business and reputation. How you deal with people interpersonally becomes your reputation and your brand. Ergo, reputations are built on trust.

Leading Insight is a management consulting company, based in San Clemente, California.  Its purpose is to provide services that help companies increase the effectiveness of their human capital, resulting in  greater productivity and revenues. They understand how to help organisations build valuable and sustainable relationships, as articulated in this article:

Research shows that even with the best products and business practices, you still need strong relationships to succeed in this marketplace.  The following is a roadmap to turn personality differences into positive business results.

Respect is at the heart of building business relationships. It is the glue that holds together the functioning of teams, partnerships and managing relationships. ( Up and down, peer-to-peer, internally and externally). Respecting the right to differ is a concept like apple pie and motherhood. We all agree with it  but can we truly foster it?

The first step is to identify the specific areas of difference. Many people see things in terms of rights and wrongs. “My way” is right and therefore “other ways” are wrong. When a situation is viewed through this lens, a power struggle ensues. When, however, a situation can be seen through the lens of difference, and a position is simply a matter of opinion not fact, then cooperation and compromise is possible. Identifying and understanding differences allows people to shift their position to one of compromise and negotiation.  The following steps are the roadmap to success:

* Respect leads to accepting a person for what he/she is.
* Accepting a person where they are, creates an environment of trust.
* Trust, leads to a willingness to be open to:
new opportunities

new collaborations

new strategies

new ideas

new products.

Once you understand the above you can use the following list to avoid power struggles, which drain energy from your effectiveness.  Here is our top 10 list for type of differences to look for:

1. Communication Styles. All people do not communicate in the same fashion. There are many inventories available to identify differing styles. Once you understand a person’s style, this knowledge can lead to respect not conflict.
2. Non-Verbal Communication. All forms of communication must be considered. This form of communication is more covert, but not any less important. Non-verbal communication includes; body language, and tone.  Non-verbal communication may differ from the verbal.  With this additional understanding of what is really being communicated more effective collaboration is possible.

3. Learning Styles. People learn in different ways. When this concept is in the forefront of understanding then communications can be geared to various styles and will meet with greater success.

4. Differing Values. This concept can be a little tricky. While values need to be identified and respected, there are times when conflicting values can be so different that they cannot coexist on the same team. When mutually exclusive values are encountered, collaboration is not recommended.

5. Boundaries. We all have different space needs and boundary needs. (Boundaries are the limits you place on the behavior of others around you.)  The first step is to be aware of peoples’ boundaries and then to use this understanding to approach them respectfully. This new behavior often avoids conflict and strengthens relationships.

6. The Self. Self-respect is a vital and primary building block that supports the formation of relationships. By being aware of your own needs and styles you create a healthy foundation and the ensuing relationships are more solid.

The remaining categories are variations on the theme of Cultural Differences. The need to understand, respect, and integrate diversity is a must in today’s market:
7. Company Culture. Seasoned employees have come from different companies and each company has a culture. This must be identified and respected in order to insure successful integration into the current company. This concept is especially pertinent to mergers and acquisitions.

8. Culture of the Country. With the global nature of our business, employees often come from different countries, each with a different culture. In order to successfully integrate multicultural differences, these differences must be understood, articulated, and respected.

9. Family Cultures. The influence of our backgrounds is great. Often we ignore these differences because they “do not belong in the workplace”.  However the reality is that people cannot keep who they are out of the work environment.  The key here is to recognize when the source of the conflict is based on someone’s family/personal issues. This allows you to choose not to engage in a battle that is based on their family history.

10. Individual vs Team. Balancing the individuals needs with team needs is always an interesting dilemma. However, if this healthy balance is not reached, problems are certain to follow.  Taking the time to identify and then address both individual and team dynamics are at the core of this balancing act.  Business success is directly related to getting this right.