Book of the week: Testing the character of today's businesses

The Character of a Corporation

By Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones (Harper Collins, pounds 8.99 paperback)

E-COMMERCE. Globalisation. Downsizing. Re-engineering. Telecommuting. Buzzwords abound in business circles and on business pages. Companies seem to be scrambling to reinvent themselves for the brave new world.

In the midst of this heavy traffic, one occasionally hears managers repeat the old standbys, "Our people are our most important asset" and "We need to improve communication". But these old cliches are fading in the din of digital, global action.

As today's businesses hurtle through the beginning of the 21st century, it would serve their managers well to pause, and reflect on the bedrock issue of their human assets and how those assets interact. The book that Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones have written, The Character Of A Corporation, is useful for those managers.

The book is about people and the cultures they create. Company cultures are much discussed but not often well understood. The authors create simple tools any reader can use to recognise the cultural personalities businesses develop. They offer clear and sound advice on the meaning and value of those cultures.

To read about "character" one might assume mercenary and fragmented cultures would be judged inferior to well-networked or communal cultures. But the authors are not judgmental. They cite situations where "less-friendly" environments might be the best conditions for particular businesses in particular conditions.

The book opens with a case study of a fellow named Andy Collins. His story is familiar. A successful long-time member of a team, a key executive at a company where everybody knows and mostly likes everybody else. A valuable and valued man in a supportive team environment.

He leaves his safe and comfortable surroundings for a job at a tough, take-no-prisoners competitor, and it makes him homesick and miserable. There's no place like home, or is there? We leave Andy Collins to resolve his conflicts and dive into a simple and elegant methodology the authors devised to analyse the culture or soul of a business.

The book is not gimmicky or simplistic, and the tools are easy to use. Sample questions and possible answers, assigned the positive or negative attributes of the culture described, illuminate the differences between culture types, and illustrate that each of the cultures have negative and positive qualities.

This aspect makes the book a good read and a valuable one. There is no absolute right and wrong, and no company whose culture is pure. Companies and their people are complex organisms and their behaviour is not constant. Different situations and problems trigger behaviours that may surprise. Taken in sum, these complex behaviours define complex cultures. Observe this complex culture over time and you will understand the organisation's character.

These issues are more important as companies and managers wrestle with rapidly changing conditions. Business models are being revised and rewritten, and the relationship of employee to employer and to other employees is breaking down.

Imagine if Andy Collins went to work at a multi-national company and was posted to a foreign country as his new employer radically revamped structure and procedures to take advantage of e-commerce opportunities and internet-based business-to-business solutions?

Poor Andy could be swamped by the technology intended to improve his business. No doubt he would have to master the technology, learn the jargon and get the job done. If not, in his new and less communal surroundings he might be left to wither at his desk while his direct- reports ignore him and get on with the work.

It can happen and it does. Transferring to a new location, especially to a new social culture can be an exciting but achingly difficult move. As market barriers tumble and communication tools improve, the mobility of management is increasing dramatically.

Through hyperactive change scenarios, international managers especially find themselves dealing with and directing people they don't know well. For a time, new management can maintain a company's momentum on the power of respect for authority. But that wears thin, and authority without respect tends to be ignored or subverted.

The challenge for a manager in this kind of situation is to assess the culture of the company, to understand how the culture functions and to evaluate the effectiveness of that culture in order to achieve the company's goals.

After this evaluation process, a good manager must try to join and continue that culture or find ways to amend it if it needs to be altered. Affecting that evolution as the rules of business change is one of the great management challenges.

This book won't plot the course required to develop e-commerce solutions, or design global marketing strategies, or even to decide whether to take the staff to a football match. Reading this book and considering its lessons will contribute to the perspective necessary to work with the people who make those decisions.