A culture killing-lesson!

In relation to my previous post, I would like to remind you a post by Jack Welch, the famous CEO, about the importance of corporate culture.

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/12/goldman-sachs-culture-values/

A great HBR article on organizational culture

Should a company fire a great talent that doesn't fit in with its culture? Check this out!

http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbreditors/2012/12/zero_dark_thirty_and_corporate.html?utm_campaign=Socialflow&utm_source=Socialflow&utm_medium=Tweet

Ineffective team building

Team building activities give the opportunity to collegues to get to know one another better. In this way, cooperation becomes easier and employees feel more comfortable. The main difficulty in such activities is to persuade people to participate. For this reason, many companies choose something easy to realize such as dinner at a restaurant. It is considered that as long as they participate, the results are positive and the company is benefited. However, is this always true?

In my opinion, most of the times team building activities have something positive to offer. But there is a possibility that a deeper knowledge of a colleague's personality harms communication. Indeed, while communication in work lies within a context familiar to anyone, communication in a restaurant is almost free. As a result, some of the participants  may not be able to get along with. For example, introverts may feel outshined by extroverts who rule the discussion. Or some others may find that they just don't fit in this environment, while they don't face any problem at work.

Recently I had a discussion with a friend who found a new job and he was sharing his experience with me. He told me that he cooperates really nice at work with his colleagues, but, listening to some of them talking outside of the workplace, he felt "disgusted" (that's the word he used) by their way of thinking.

I am sure that such an experience cannot be a serious obstacle in the way they work. On the other hand, it creates a sense of distrust which can be harmful in the long run.

Since trust is essential in leadership development, team leaders should take actions in advance, and protect the framework of communication in team building activities, as long as it is possible. And it is very crucial that they don't make their colleagues feel uncomfortable with their behaviour.Even outside of the workplace, they should stick to the rules of communication. Besides, a leader communicates constantly!

Unusual facts!

In Greece, many married couples with children decide to take a divorce, so that their children would be accepted to a kindergarden!

Moral numbers

Nowadays that economy struggles, managers and governors have to watch every detail in their data. Everything seems to be number-driven. My question is if this "numberocracy" has a limit. Is there any context out of which one can't use numbers and indexes?
For example, it would be useful for our economy to kill pensioners. Of course, noone would dare such a thing. But, where is that limit when we stop deciding upon numbers and we take into consideration other factors?

Social loafing and division of labour

I can’t understand people. They say they don’t want to be treated like sheep, but they don’t do the work of the shepherd as well. They waste their time hanging around. Who gave them the right to waste their time and relax?

Social loafing.  We leave important things to be done by others. So, give me a single reason, why the one who did what it had to be done, according to his opinion of course, not to take advantage of his authority.

Finally, I tend to believe that the division of labour encourages social loafing. Although productivity is increased, our sense of responsibility is reduced. Thus, we become socially inactive, always waiting for someone else to take responsibility of a situation. 

About Unions

When a union takes place, for example a marriage or a merger, both parts obtain access to the resources of the other, but they are accountable for its obligations as well.

In the very special case of the EU, however, they attempt to make a political union (since there is a government) with the aim to manage more efficiently the union's resources and that's it. There is not such thing as union as far as obligations are concerned.

I am not specialized in such issues and maybe I am wrong, but in my mind it seems that either we should move on an absolute union with a single strong government or we should keep just the structure of a free trade union. The existing situation lies somewhere in the middle and it just creates counter-productive disputes.

My position is that we should move on, since so many structures are already made. What we should fix right now is the cultural issue. A union will never be realised as long as we have different values from our partners. There is the "north" and the "south" culture.

Indeed, using Hofstede's dimensions on culture, one can see the difference. I chose five northern and five southern countries and I estimated the averages on each dimension. Then I sorted the scores of the ten countries from largest to smallest for each dimension separately and draw a line to separate countries above and below the average.

In power distance dimension (PDI) they are perfectly seperated in southern and northern.

In individualism vs collectivism dimension (IDV), below the average there are only southern countries again. (Although France and Italy score high in individualism).

In masculinity vs femininity (MAS) dimension, southern countries score much higher, with the exception of Germany.

In the uncertainty avoidance dimension (UAI), there is a clear separation again into southern and northern countries.

In the long term vs short term orientation index (LTO), there is a mixed result. In this dimension there is no score available for Greece.

According to these simple observations, it is implied that we should work towards an alignment in PDI, UAI and MAS dimensions in general, while Greece and Portugal should raise their individualism score.

Is this feasible? We are talking about a huge change which needs certainly more than one generation in time to take place. Has this ever happened before in such a large scale? Of course not, but we also have to take into consideration that cultural changes are easier to happen mostly due to the web.

And this situation leads to another question raised in Hofstede's website.

"Will there be one big world culture in 50 years from now?"

I am not sure.