"That is the way we do things around here." Have you ever heard that phrase when trying to affect positive change in your organization? It really doesn't matter how far-reaching the scope of your change. It doesn't matter if it is a technology implementation, a deferral from the tried-and-true market strategy or simply a change in a scheduled meeting. The ability of your organization to share knowledge and information is predicated on the cultural temperament of your organization and its pace of change. New technology and the ability to analyze complex sets of information for the purpose of decision support have introduced constant change into the business environment. If the culture of an organization is not taken into consideration, changing the manner in which information is exchanged is an uphill climb.

What Really Comprises an Organizational Culture?

Culture is a multidimensional enigma that envelops the organization. Every member of the organization contributes to the culture in some manner. The history, style of leadership, structural stability, level of work-force empowerment and the ability to adapt to a changing environment all contribute to the culture of an organization. Shaping the culture to face changes in the marketplace and environment depends in part on the ability for the organization's leadership to implement the guiding vision and mission. Every action taken must align with these vision and mission statements that express why the organization exists and how it will corporately conduct itself.

History and Background of Organization.

An organization’s history and background are the foundation that can be built upon or a barrier to overcome. Some of the attributes to consider are:

•The age of your organization. Many well-established companies are slow to change. If they have lasted for more than 50 years, then why do things differently? Conversely, newer organizations tend to sway in the winds of change and haven’t established roots deep enough to know how to react to new situations.

•The origins of your organization

Is your firm a conglomeration of many other smaller entities or a single-site manufacturing firm? There are considerations attached to either scenario. It is important that the history of your organization is known. When the pressure of a change situation is applied, old social norms can pop up. Understanding the origins assists in devising change management strategies.

Leadership Style

How the executives and senior management interact with the rest of the organization sets the tone of an organization’s culture. Granted, these leaders cannot single handedly change the culture. (Unless they fire everyone and start from scratch, not a likely scenario.) However, their leadership style dictates how they interact with their direct reports and the general employee population. These interactions send messages that have an impact on information sharing. Is the CEO sharing information? Does the average employee know the financial health of the company or the markets to be focused upon? Leadership style typically breaks down into two main categories:

•Command and Control – Task orientation tends to be the marquee of the command and control leadership style. Micromanaging the direct reports by telling them what to do, how to do it, when it should be done, by whom and where it should take place exemplifies high task-related behavior. There is only one-way communication with the exception of clarifying questions to make sure the objective is understood completely.

•Delegating/Empowering – Relationship orientation tends to be more facilitative and communicative. This leadership style depends on the synergy of the group to determine the best course of action. The behaviors exhibited included facilitation, listening, supporting and mentoring the other employees so that the best possible course of action can be created together. Employee buy-in is of great importance to this leadership style.

Structural Stability

The ability to withstand a change in organizational culture can be evident through some of the traditional business measures of stability. Financial strength, productivity and market focus are traditional business measures that define the stability of an organization’s structure. However, twenty-first century business models recognize some less tangible attributes of an organization’s structure that affect a change effort’s success.

Are there functional siloed reporting structures or does the business process dictate who works for whom? Do the channels of communication flow freely across functional areas? Can a manager from engineering communicate a problem to a manager in marketing without involving the senior managers from each area? It is important to have the strength of common understanding across the organization to exemplify its structural stability. If open communication threatens the ability to produce, the organization is not stable. This means being able to walk the walk and not just pay lip service to open communication and business process-related organizational structures.

Employee Empowerment Level

Just as the leadership of the organization can have a task or relationship orientation, so can the rest of the organization. Are the employees empowered to make decisions in their day-to-day activities that affect positive business results? The trickling down of decision-making authority tends to strengthen the fiber of an organization. Granted, this also means trickling down the accountability for success as well. Well-trained, well-informed employees are essential to the successful empowered organization. High empowerment and high autonomy need to have well-defined guiding objectives.

Adaptability or Agility

The only constant in today’s business environment is change. Successful organizations seem to adapt to a change in market conditions seamlessly and with minimal effort. How are they able to be so agile, so nimble? The culture is ready for the unexpected. In fact, they expect the unexpected! Unknowns are part of their day-to-day planning and routines.

Vision and Mission Statement Implementation

An organization’s vision and mission should be articulated and available for the entire organization to witness and internalize. A vision gets everyone on the same page and shows where the organization’s future lies. A vision must be shared or an opportunity to buck the system and cause strife presents itself. Work to cultivate a shared vision. The mission statement tells the organization, suppliers and customers who your company is and what its value proposition is to them.

The statement, "Why, because this is who we are," provides the context in which employees know how to operate and conduct business. The vision and mission are two very important and foundational pieces of guiding information that must be clearly communicated to the entire organization and monitored for adherence to the principles of your organization’s beliefs and ethics. If you cannot share them, then sharing other critical business items is highly doubtful.

Assessing the Cultural Impact on Information Sharing

As previously stated, the ability of your organization to share knowledge and information is predicated on the cultural temperament of your organization and its pace of change. Every organization adapts to change. It's the speed and flexibility to which this adaptation takes place that determine success. Assessing the culture and understanding how to approach knowledge sharing within the organizational structure supports change efforts.

Assessing the organization from a cultural perspective assists in designing change management plans that address the human factors. Acceptance of new information sharing processes and technology by the people who have to enact the processes or utilize the technology is critical to successful implementation. Therefore, understanding the culture from an objective compilation of subjective information gathering begins to map out the barriers to information sharing that can occur. It also exposes the leverage points resident in the organization that can positively impact information sharing as well.

Outcomes of the Cultural Impact

Assessing the corporate culture will propel information-sharing efforts. How? By understanding the context in which knowledge will be perceived and applied. Depending on how favorable and conducive the culture of your organization is to sharing information, the extremes of the knowledge-sharing culture are either to share for the sake of sharing versus hoarding knowledge and information to protect one's position. Information Sharing vs. Information Hoarding.

One would think that information sharing is always better than hoarding information. However, sharing information just for the sake of sharing must have a business purpose at its root. For example, a CEO who decides to publish the minutes of his senior staff meetings on the company intranet to prove that the organization's culture is open will appear to be sharing for the sake of sharing without a sound business reason. Sharing information should support business decision making or propel innovation. There must also be a structured process by which to capture and use the information being uncovered. Capturing the engineers' problem-solving conversation by the water cooler so that others in the company can benefit from their expertise is the benefit information-sharing activities should return. The corporate culture that supports information sharing is ahead of the one that does not. However, gaining business benefit from the activity requires a structured approach to leverage uncovered information.

Information hoarding is the other extreme. Information and knowledge still represent power. This is truer in today's economy than ever before. Organizations are learning that employee interactions yield new knowledge and information that can benefit their business in tangible ways. Hoarding is not always a conscience act of holding back information. Interestingly, it's not always the highly paid senior manager that possesses the knowledge to meet the challenge of the day's pressing issues. Quite often, it's the employee that is not invited to the strategy session or even asked to contribute that has the sought-after knowledge. Encouraging and providing an incentive for those often overlooked people to share what they know will show returns to the organization via an increased base of knowledge. Hoarding information results from a lack of trust. If this sounds too familiar, then focus on some strategies that will help leverage your organization's culture to begin productive information sharing.

Strategies to Leverage your Organization’s Culture

A complete cultural overhaul may not be necessary to encourage information sharing. In fact, trying to take on that task at the same time you are trying to foster a sharing environment may be counter productive to both efforts.

•Change Management

Comprehensive change management requires a three-phase approach that takes human dynamics and human needs into account. Each type of organizational culture needs all three phases to institute a successful change management plan. However, depending on the organizational assessment results, one phase may receive more emphasis then the others. The main objective of each of the three phases is:

Promotion – Envision the future environment with the information-sharing culture in place. Show the benefits to operating in a knowledge-sharing environment and allow the leadership to send encouraging, motivating messages. Create tension between the environment of today and that of the future being promoted. After the education and training phases are complete and the new behaviors are in place on a day-to- day basis, offer incentives to encourage continued practice.

Education – Present the theory behind the vision of the future being promoted to employees. Then the "why" questions can be answered with sound reasoning to build a foundation of understanding throughout the organization

Training – Provide practical application of processes, technologies and environments. Allow participants to experience the new information-sharing environment in a "lab" setting where clarifying questions can be asked and issues addressed prior to integrating the new behavior into the everyday work routines. New human behaviors and practices are being instituted; therefore, the organization must provide the necessary support to ensure success.

•Creating Collaborative Environments

Define knowledge-sharing communities that affect the high- value business processes and target them for the first implementations of structured information sharing. By designing the optimum collaborative community for the organization’s primary business needs, timely, accurate information will be delivered in context.

•Leadership Modeling Behavior

A significant indicator of successfully promoting organizational change is that the leadership models the desired behavior. In fact, the first implementation of an information-sharing environment should be among organizational leaders and from this group to the general work force. Modeling this behavior helps reinforce the commitment to changing a corporate behavior and shows the work force there will be no negative repercussions to sharing information.

•Knowledge Sharing Benchmark Comparisons

Capture analytics of information-sharing actions to create best practices for getting high-velocity work done. Then, benchmark your organization against others in your industry to determine how you compare to your competitors. This will allow you to analyze where the marketplace is pushing your competition rather than where you want to pull them to in the marketplace.

Summary

Knowing yourself, your limitations, weaknesses and strengths provides an advantage when considering the ability to share and use information effectively. The same is true with an organization made up of people. Knowing the culture of the organization is an indicator of corporate personality. Collectively, the organization's personality dictates how it will adapt to a change in its environment. Once determined, the correct change management path can be prescribed and information sharing can propel the business value of uncovered knowledge beyond expectations. The synergy experienced by a free flow of relevant information has great impact on your organization's ability to leverage its information assets.

Maribeth Achterberg is a certified Knowledge Manager with more than sixteen years of experience in the electric and gas utility, telecommunications, retail, real estate and transportation industries. She is president of Verity Management Solutions LLC.

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