Culture Matters

For a while now, I have been thinking about organizational culture as a topic and impact of culture on organization growth and performance. Experts say that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Simply put culture is a set of norms of behavior, mindset and social norms within the organization. Strategy is the objective, logic based plan and road map for an organization to be followed by all the members of the organization.

Sigmund Freud in his book “Civilization and it’s discontents” talks about the super-ego of community and this super ego become the influence under which culture for any organization evolves. Like the individual super- ego the cultural super ego is formed basis great personalities and superb achievements of teams and individuals, human beings who have developed their potential to the fullest and become legends. At an individual there is some respite as an one finds some means of balancing between the id and the ego and not giving in to the excessive demands of the super ego. At a group and an organization level, it seems that the super ego operates from a space of absolute supremacy -the basic assumption is that the individual ego has unlimited power over the id. At times, organizational values and culture which the organization ascribes to are nothing but lofty ideals and possibly a collective defense mechanism against acknowledging the opposite ideal in practice. Eg. An IT firm states that “excellence” is one of it’s values. However in the same organization the IT infrastructure team takes a week to fix a basic problem in a laptop. While the above example is a common occurrence in most run of the mill organizations , it is definitely important to establish a code of conduct and a set of norms for a group and a company to function well. However to do this , one can’t ignore the realities of the here and now. Else the whole business of “values” comes across like a sham and what is operating is something else.