By Terri Benincasa, Ed.M.
So, you want to get and stay ahead of your closest competitor, outpace your industry’s growth trend, and position yourself for your most profitable year yet as the benchmark for years to come.
Easier said than done, yes? Actually, it is easier to do than you may think.
Companies making the greatest strides in all three areas know something that struggling ones seem to ignore or refuse to tackle – they have dedicated time and resources to creating and maintaining a very healthy organizational culture.
So, what exactly is an “organizational culture” – sounds like something growing on your walls – and why is it the key to business success?
Your organizational, or company culture, is in essence the foundation upon which you operate, and the deal breaker for young talent seeking the right professional fit. It includes such things as:
- the way you make decisions;
- what you reward and how you do it;
- how and what you communicate
- whether you’re rigid or flexible to enhance performance
- how you problem-solve.
Companies still operating in “last century” mode – what’s called the “Autocratic-Bureaucratic” design – will experience
- high turn-over (a terrible waste of company resources),
- poor customer service performance, and
- heightened risk through constant, unresolved conflict and a fear-based mentality, just to name a few maladies responsible for poor business outcomes.
Companies operating from “Collaborative-Democratic” design principles now emphasized in all the best Schools of Management, will experience the opposite –
- staff loyalty for low turn-over (a huge boon to the bottom-line right there),
- thorough and inspired service performance, and
- reduced liability risk from increased ethical behavior and healthy problem-solving.
Just the names of the design principles alone tell you much about the difference between the two approaches, but here’s where it gets a little tricky. Many companies think they’ve created a great work environment, just to learn with a little surface-scratching that they are unwittingly undermining their own efforts through such culture-busters as
- insufficient use of best-practices for enhanced staff performance;
- poorly developed policies & procedures and/or operational systems/tools, and
- a lack of actual knowledge about what motivates their employees vs. what they think will do the trick.
If you’re truly serious about stepping ahead in your competitiveness, making significant strides in growth, and sustaining consistent profitability, invest in assessing – and if need be, changing – your company culture, to one that has been proven to best reap these results. Look at it this way, if it’s right for the likes of Whirlpool, Lenscrafters, and Coca-Cola, it will serve you well, too.
Terri Benincasa is CEO of Benincasa & Associates, Inc., a Business & Personal Coaching company. Terri holds a double Masters in Counseling Psychology from Columbia University, has over 15 years of senior management and business ownership experience, and is a trained, professional actress. She combines these sources with the combined 30 years’ experience of her Associates for very powerful, insightful, and dynamic results. 
