Sudhir Singh is a global HR leader in San Francisco Bay Area. He is on the Board of Silicon Valley HR Network.
getty
I recently wrote about how leaders can build a meaningful, productive organizational culture, and many CEOs and HR professionals reached out to me wanting to know more. The most prominent query was about achieving the balance between dynamic strategic objectives and the fixed organizational values. How does one build a culture that stays true to both? I shared with them the “beams and pillars” model for organizational culture, which I crafted as a tool to achieve the balance.
Imagine the organization as a building with the values as the foundation and the strategic objectives as the ceiling. The foundation is permanent while the exterior is changeable. In this model, the organizational values are represented as the foundation due to their permanent nature. Just like the foundation in a building, values are embedded in the base. The strategic objectives are right at the top as is the ceiling in a building. It is up there, visible and able to change as needed to suit the building functionality and environmental demands.
Between the foundation and the ceiling, visualize the beams supporting the ceiling and the pillars connecting it to the foundation. The beams and the pillars provide the strength to the building, just like the culture does for an organization. The culture supports the strategic objectives at the top. A well-defined culture supports them even better.
With this model, we understand the duality of the process for deriving the cultural tenets. One set of cultural tenets is derived from the strategic objectives. This set is comprised of practices essential for achieving the business results. The other set is derived from the values and contains the behaviors that bring the values to action. Ideally, there should be substantial overlap between the two and it should not be difficult to identify five or six top tenets from the lists. If we end up with two completely different sets of cultural tenets, it is indicative of misalignment between the strategic objectives and the values. It is a good test of their alignment.
To understand the model in practical terms, let us consider Google as an example. It expresses its strategic objectives in form of a mission statement and certain commitments:
• Mission: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
• Commitments: “Committed to significantly improving the lives of as many people as possible” through advancing sustainability, including all voices, protecting users, expanding opportunity and responding to crises.
What kind of organizational culture do we think will help Google achieve these objectives?
Below is a list of cultural tenets that could support these strategic objectives. These are the beams.
1. Inclusivity
2. Compassion
3. Security and sustainability
4. Expansion
Next, let us look at what values Google lists in its “ten things” philosophy:
1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There’s always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.
Based on the list of values above, the following could be the cultural tenets supporting them. These are the pillars.
1. Inclusivity and democracy
2. Focus, speed and excellence
3. Informality and fun
4. Expansion
The overlap between the two lists of the tenets — the beams and the pillars — is substantial, which indicates strong alignment between the strategic objectives and the organizational values. We can combine the two to arrive at the comprehensive list of the cultural tenets:
1. Inclusivity and democracy
2. Compassion
3. Security and sustainability
4. Expansion
5. Focus, speed and excellence
6. Informality and fun
I talked to many Googlers and ex-Googlers to understand how close this list of cultural tenets is to the real culture at Google they experienced. Almost all of them found it accurate.
Another question people asked me was about including aspects like accountability, integrity, teamwork, trust, respect, etc., in the organizational values or the cultural tenets. I believe that these aspects are more of work ethics that do not need to be called out. They are prerequisites for any reasonable organization. Including them in the list of values or cultural tenets is a colossal waste of awfully expensive real estate.
Let us look at Microsoft as an example. It is one such organization that lists respect, integrity and accountability as its values. It states that its mission is “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” I will let you derive the cultural tenets from the mission and values using the beams and pillars model. Are you able to evaluate the alignment between their mission and values? How strong is the connection between the two?
Once you have your combined list of cultural tenets from the above exercise, compare it with the list of actual cultural tenets identified by Microsoft:
1. Growth mindset
2. Customer obsessed
3. Diverse and inclusive
4. One Microsoft
5. Making a difference
Do you see any gaps or disconnects? Do you think that the culture at one of these organizations may have a more deliberate impact on the business outcomes and employee experience than the other?
This is the power of a well-designed, meaningful and productive culture. The beams and pillars model helps you design one.
Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?
