Creating a culture of success

Healthcare Financial Management, June, 1990 by Edward A. Kazemek

Every healthcare organization has a culture consisting of informal elements, norms, and dominant values that define the way its work is accomplished. Values, which he at the center of any organization's culture, are significant properties that employees believe in and act on. Recent research has reinforced the fact that organizational success stems not only from analysis and management focused on numbers and efficiency, but also from a concentration on culture - defining and establishing a set of core values for the organization and strictly adhering to them. An emphasis on quality, values, and culture is nothing new. It involves rediscovering some of the traditional ingredients that have contributed to the rapid growth and success of American enterprise over the past several decades. IBM, Procter & Gamble, johnson & Johnson, and General Electric are among major American corporations known for having achieved success by fostering a strong corporate culture and adhering closely to a core set of values. But success based on a cultural advantage is not restricted to large, multinational corporations. Countless healthcare organizations have excelled because of their cultures and the role that management played in creating and cultivating them. Cultivating culture. Research shows that managers interested in improving an organization's potential should focus on the organization's culture-almost to the point of obsession. To cultivate a healthcare organition's culture, its management mu focus on leading, managing, and monitoring its culture. Leading the culture. Terrence Deal and Allan Kennedy, the authors of Corporate Cultures, refer to individuals who lead the culture as heroes,' noting that "if values are the soul of the culture, then heroes personify those values and epitomize the strength of the organization. Heroes are pivotal figures in a strong culture.' Studies of organizational leadership conducted during the past two decades have identified factors and approaches that successful leaders hold in common. They also suggest that leadership skills-or at least a process of cultural leadership-can be learned and that, unlike the movies, heroes need not be larger than life. A manager's role in leading the culture is to engage in activities that direct and guide the organization toward the values and vision deemed important to success. The process consists of three steps: Diagnosing the culture to see if operations and individual behavior are congruent with organizational values; , Creating a vision or agenda for change that reflects the desired system of values and culture of the organization; and Building support throughout the organization for the vision. Managing the culture. A chief executive officer or department head cannot manufacture a culture singlehandedly. An organization's values do not exist in the abstract or within one individual. They are created, instilled, given meaning, and perpetuated through the collective behavior and leadership of the mos powerful and influential people within the organization. Most frequently, these individuals are members of its senior management team. Consequently, to realize values that are essential to the organization's success, members of this team must build a consensus around those values, commit to them, and cooperate and coordinate to ensure their achievement. Steps to take include: * Agreeing on values, both external and internal; * Establishing goals that are consistent

with values; * Building the structure, both formal

and informal, to implement

values; * Monitoring the climate for problems;

and * Making changes as required in

the structure and goals.

Over time, living the values and supporting the culture must become the responsibility of every employee. The more serious and dedicated managers are in assuming and discharging that responsibility, the more readily workers will embrace the organization's culture. Monitoring the culture. The leaders and managers of an organization act as guardians of its culture. They can monitor it subjectively on a daily and routine basis to ensure that it is being effectively realized and maintained. Management also can use formal questionnaires to tap employee reactions and opinions about value adherence, the quality of the organization's work climate and human resources management practices, and the effectiveness of the subsystems that contribute to a sound culture (organizational structure and operations, decision-making procedures, communication systems and patterns, and its compensation and reward system).