All 2 entries tagged Organizations

Organizational Culture is everywhere….

Working on my KBAM PMA. Suggesting how WaiveRiders could use Knowledge Management in order to manage  its assets considering the whole life-cycle of the products. I ended realising that the best way to make it work, is to make those aspects, the care for knowledge and the consideration for the whole life-cycle part of the culture, of the blood of the organisation. That is funny because several PMA`s I worked on had to talk about culture, two of them (PIUSS and LE) were clearly about using specific systems (6S and the EFQM) for that change. It is, of course, a very important aspect. The problem is that changing culture is slow (and I found some interesting material saying that it is not possible to really change at the managers will). The main conclusion is, if you wanna build a good organisation (and thinking, as usual, on the long term!) think about setting up the proper culture on it!

: 12 Apr 2009 04:56 |  Tags: Culture Kbam Mbe Organizations Pma |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Organizations culture

Working on CBE`s PMA. Reading about something I`ve always thought of that is how fascinating is a companies culture. So many different ways or working. Impressive how companies in the same country, city, industry, pretty similar staff have such different ways to decide and organize, such different values.

It`s obvious to say country, sector, seniority of staff, etc etc etc are strong influences on a company culture. But connecting CBE with LE, it`s amazing the effect leadership styles have on a company. It is amaze to think that, for example, a global industry, with hundreds of thousands of employees spread in the whole world can be influenced by the style of a CEO, one person that`s is as close to this people as Britney Spears or the Dalai Lama. The example that strikes me the most is Jack Welch. But there`s one that I find very interesting. There`s a Brazilian company that is the biggest heavy construction company in latin america. They also have huge positions in petrochemical and services industries, but they`re heart is civil engineering, big stuff (airports, bridges, dams, etc etc). They have sites in all continents. They have some 50.000 employees. Some of them are members of my family, including my brother (and a uncle who is  responsible for keeping the company culture going). The company follows a Management Manual kind of thing, a business model that was created by their founder (that is over 90 years old but still alive and working!) that is called Odebrecht Empresarial Technology (Odebrecht is the company`s name).   It is amazing how all employees knowing or not somehow act in that way. They all receive the book when they join the company, but I`m pretty sure very few read it. 2 examples:

- They are against showing off richness, wealth. The founder and his family have always been very simple, accessible, humble. Even though they are billionaires, but they lead a very simple life. I`ve been colleague with one of they`re grandchildren in university (public one, not-paid!) and her car was VERY VERY simple. They reproduce that into the company. Be simple, don`t show off,  no unnecessary luxury, not private jets or anything like that for anyone!

-Independence. The managers have a great deal of independence. They manage each one of the sites in a very free way, they have a lot of power to make decisions (but of course they respond for it as well).

Now imagine how to implement an excellence management model and having to deal with all the implications of companies specific cultural issues?

: 28 Nov 2008 17:47 |  Tags: Cbe Changes Cultural Culture Excellence Mbe Organizations |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem