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Because of its largely intangible nature – especially in our technocentric business world, where problems often are resolved using strict scientific solutions, algorithms and equations – the concept of corporate culture often is relegated to soft value status. Culture is, after all, difficult to quantify, measure or act on directly. Even when culture is recognized as an important business component, many companies are uncertain how to address problems when they arise.
Others – including IBM – however, view culture as a powerful asset that can propel them toward success. Indeed, many understand that culture is the one single differentiator that, if properly nurtured, cannot be completely duplicated. Former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner noted succinctly: “…culture isn’t just one aspect of the game – it is the game.”
As leaders in the new discipline of services science, IBM Research and IBM Global Business Services collaborated on a research-based approach that systemically addresses culture in a way that gives it a workable, objective, tangible form. The method, called Business Practices Alignment (BPA), was filed for patent protection in 2004 and is the subject of a new IBM book titled “Tangible Culture,” due on the shelves in early 2006.
Culture is something that many business people reference, yet find hard to define in an actionable way. It encompasses a broad range of topics, such as norms, values, assumptions, and behaviors, and is a key in determining how people perform their work. The rules that drive behaviors are largely unwritten, and often informal, tacit and difficult to articulate. This intangible nature lies at the heart of many challenges related to corporate culture.
BPA offers a roster of benefits, including descriptive terminology, that helps employees communicate more effectively; fresh perspectives on how to better understand cultural challenges and how to address them; assistance in clarifying expectations; tools to help companies go beyond the obvious and see subtle disconnects that can impede progress; and techniques to help leaders objectively evaluate progress of a company’s culture change efforts – something that has hampered culture efforts in the past.
Central to BPA are three separate but interrelated concepts, which can be mixed, matched and tailored to configure many different solutions to specific culture needs – helping assure a fit to unique culture challenge:
- Business practices are collective organizational habits – the unwritten rules that tell people how to execute the processes and policies, handle problems, respond to measures and results, and take various other actions. Business practices help make companies unique, even if their processes, policies, measures and activities are the same as those used by other companies. Business practices are a suitable surrogate for business culture and are the key to making culture tangible.
- Right vs. right is a critical concept that comes into play when employees are dealing with more than one good option. In situations where previously separate internal or external groups must work together – such as a merger, acquisition, alliance or major restructuring – there is often a clash of right vs. right: options that are correct for achieving the objective yet are in conflict with each other. In some situations, the conflict is right vs. right business practices, and in others, right vs. right mindsets are the issue.
- Outcome narratives help bring clarity to business expectations in changing situations – especially when multiple people are required to make difficult decisions and take action together. Many of these situations are unclear, and reasonable people can disagree about how to handle them without the help of outcome narratives. Outcome narratives provide a new format, based on structured storytelling, for clarifying these kinds of situations and communicating the implications of reconciled right vs. right options. They also provide an objective, systemic basis for identifying gaps that need to be addressed, and for evaluating progress in multi-year culture change efforts.
In the last few years, IBM researchers and business consultants have successfully applied the innovative BPA method to resolve merging and unifying cultures issues within IBM. For example, BPA came into play during a recent acquisition, helping to facilitate common meaning and expectations among members of the combined leadership team. And on another project, it was used to distinguish between issue types, enabling the team to quickly develop a targeted action plan to help ensure that the complex issues would, indeed, be addressed. BPA also is an underlying technique IBM is using to help enhance collaboration for on demand business. In addition, several external services clients, including a Canadian insurance company, are beginning to reap the benefits of applying this actionable approach to culture challenges.
BPA grew out of IBM’s own experience when it acquired PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting – a timely opportunity to put into practice IBM’s commitment to the ballooning services industry and to explore new ways to address on demand business objectives. BPA is just one aspect of the groundbreaking services sciences, management and engineering focus of IBM’s Almaden Services Research group (ASR). Created to address needs growing out of the shift to services-led economy, ASR is bringing together ongoing work in computer science, operations research, industrial engineering, business strategy, management sciences, and social and cognitive sciences.
To find out more about this research and explore innovative ways to address culture challenges in your business, contact On Demand Innovation Services today.
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