{"id":2833,"date":"2020-04-28T06:43:43","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T06:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ceo-worldwide.com\/blog\/?p=2833"},"modified":"2025-06-11T05:18:44","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T05:18:44","slug":"does-your-company-have-a-winning-corporate-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ceo-worldwide.com\/blog\/does-your-company-have-a-winning-corporate-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Your Company Have a Winning Corporate Culture?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I\u2019ve been reading Bill and Dave (subtitled: How Hewlett and Packard built the World\u2019s Greatest Company) by Michael Malone. He\u2019s a great writer, and it\u2019s an important business story; I heartily recommend it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being an ex-HPer, I have tremendous respect, bordering on reverence for the \u201cHP Way\u201d, which was the basis for the corporate culture at Hewlett Packard for so many years. With the benefit of hindsight, it wasn\u2019t perfect and there were definitely things I\u2019d change. But you can\u2019t argue with the results. Bill and Dave essentially founded Silicon Valley, and built an unbelievably successful company that grew like clockwork for nearly four decades. The HP Way is long gone and the company is nearly unrecognizable from the one I worked in. But to this day I don\u2019t believe they\u2019ve ever had a full year of negative profit results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The term \u201cCorporate Culture\u201d has been defined many different ways by a lot of people, some of them so complex as to be unreadable. Here\u2019s a definition that\u2019s probably as good as most:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe you have a better definition, but this one\u2019s probably adequate for our discussion here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, Malone\u2019s book got me to thinking about corporate cultures at tech companies and their effect on a company\u2019s performance. It\u2019s something that I think is really undervalued in too many of today\u2019s corporations. It\u2019s often dismissed as a squishy, \u201csoft\u201d issue that\u2019s unimportant to analytical senior managers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of my HP bias, there have been a lot of very successful companies that have been built with very different cultures relative to HP\u2019s in its heyday. One notable contrast would be IBM, a peer and competitor which as an east coast-based company had a much more traditional, hierarchical, button-down culture. But the IBM culture<\/a> was revered as well, and the company was also wildly successful for a long period of time. As the saying goes, there\u2019s more than one way to skin a cat (a very unfortunate idiom\u2013who thought that one up?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cultures have been categorized many different ways including but not limited to \u201cWork Hard, Play Hard Culture<\/a>\u201d, \u201cTough-Guy, Macho Culture\u201d, \u201cProcess Culture\u201d, \u201cBet-The-Company Culture\u201d, and many more. In my mind, none of that matters much. What matters, in my opinion is does the culture drive positive results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you might surmise that the easiest way to define a great corporate culture is to look at financial results. That\u2019s fine in the long run; with the benefit of hindsight, there probably is no better way to identify a great corporate culture than the decades of financial success such as HP and IBM enjoyed. But in the short run, financial results can be deceiving. It\u2019s entirely possible to have a great short run of success even with a poisonous company culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"corporate<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So what\u2019s the best way to measure whether you\u2019ve built a great culture? The details vary at various successful software and hardware companies, but what are the common ingredients of a culture that sets the stage for long-term success? Here\u2019s my shot at a list of the key attributes of winning corporate cultures:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Employees want to stay<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For me, this may be the best gross indicator of a winning corporate culture. I know, you might say \u201cThat could means it\u2019s a country club\u201d with excellent compensation and low demands. But how often do you actually see that in a high performing company? Very seldom in my experience. In reality there is a great propensity for employees to take the view that \u201cthe grass is always greener\u201d, and long to go somewhere else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best people rise to the top<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is another really key indicator of a company culture \u201cclicking on all cylinders\u201d. Particularly in larger organizations, political skills often are the dominant talent required to rise to the top of the org chart. There\u2019s nothing wrong with this\u2013it\u2019s a skill set that\u2019s very important to successfully influencing large, complex organizations and moving them in the right direction. The ability to connect with people and bring them to your position cannot be understated as a needed attribute of a corporate leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s important that these political skills are also paired with strong business savvy. The best leaders not only have the ability to \u201cwin the internal meeting\u201d, but also the analytical and decision-making skills to drive the company to win in the marketplace. Sadly, all too often I\u2019ve seen that those rising to the top are not exceptional in both these categories. A great corporate culture should facilitate the identification, retention and promotion of such well-rounded leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Employees speak well of the company to outsiders<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Everyone loves to bitch about their job and idiosyncrasies of where they work. But I find that in companies with the very best cultures, the word gets out about how great a place is to work, because great places to work are frankly, very rare. This means that you\u2019ve created such a great environment that your employees brag about it to their friends and external colleagues, overcoming that very strong human propensity to view their jobs in a negative light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opinions flow freely without fear of retribution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This one probably isn\u2019t a hard and fast rule. I\u2019ve seen traditional hierarchical organizations that were very successful. In those instances, you tend to see opinions flow down from the top much more often than you see them flowing openly from below. But I believe in most successful \u201cmodern\u201d corporation cultures, this is a pretty typical attribute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corporate Culture: Don\u2019t have to overpay to attract talent<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You might think of this one downstream result of positive vibe from the previous four categories. If you\u2019ve created a fair, stimulating, challenging and comfortable work environment, you don\u2019t have to work very hard to restock it with new employees. In many cases you won\u2019t even have to look for them\u2013they will find you. In companies with the very best cultures, outsiders practically beat down the door to get hired. That means your pay packages won\u2019t need to \u201cset the market\u201d, they\u2019ll just need to be \u201cin the market\u201d to attract great executive talent<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that\u2019s my list\u2013what\u2019s yours? What\u2019s your view on which company has the finest corporate culture?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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