Would you like to improve your company “work culture”?

Citation:“Culture is as important as your business strategy because it either strengthens or undermines your objectives.”

Work culture is “soft skill” represented with continuous interaction between each individual employee and business environment created by employer. “Soft skill” means difficult to be measured. “Represented with continuous interaction” means that will last until parties involved has common values, attitudes, tradition and beliefs. On internet, I haven’t found any definition which tells that work culture depends on “common interest” between employer and employee!

You will find dozens of sites appear on Google search about “western” understanding of work culture. I’ll talk about “eastern” (i.e. Toyota and Kyocera). Next chapters will explain why.

What western’s do to improve work culture

Enterprises are trying to change work culture by promoting their leading values like “Customer satisfaction is our top priority”, “Be Agile, lead your Team”, “Creativity is our leading value”, “Our employees are our strength”. At the same time, they set stretched individual KPI’s and stick them into individual wages and benefits, they invest in IT systems to implement employee tracking & control systems and initiate enterprise reorganization every year or two as a part of formal change to “shake” organization. Unfortunately, these concreate activities may indicate employer distrust to employees, and they are opposite to promoting values. Push and control methods focused on individual are typical for most western companies. Not all of them.

Albert Einstein once said: “We cannot solve our problems with same thinking we used when we created them."

10 years ago, “work culture” was main challenge. Today, many adopt business process technology (BPM) expecting to change working culture as well. Has it happened? Many employers think that artificial intelligence and robotization will replace humans and eliminate work culture problem in the future. Do you believe this?

Simplified Toyota Production System®

Eastern, such as Toyota (Top 10 of Forbes for many years) believe that humans make technology to serve humans, not to replace them.

Toyota TPS ® Toyota Production System promotes common values through several methods as part of KAIZEN (continuous improvement). For example, Hensei (self-reflection) is method of self-evaluation and improvement. Poka-Yoke is mistake-proofing method which improves quality of product or service. Jidoka is method how to work in automated environment (often called “automation with human touch”). 5S is a method how to make your workplace comfortable for work. Gemba describes how to become good team leader (and manager). Kanban defines how to schedule your work Just In Time and distinguish priorities.

In Toyota, they create such an business environment where every individual employee (field worker, office worker or manager) in the company knows why he/she stays with the company, when is time to leave and/or when he/she may expect to be fired.

Simplified Kyocera Amoeba Management®

Citation: “The Kyocera Group believes that decisions should always be made through reason and with "What is the right thing to do as a human being?" as the basic criteria to achieve compliance with public morals.”

They believe that all decision must be taken for the benefit of human beings but in compliance with public moral (cultural specifics). They set this statement into practice sharing responsibility between the employees and managers.

1. Establishment of a market-oriented divisional accounting system,

2. Fostering leaders with management,

3. Management by all.

In Kyocera, every organizational unit is market oriented, means that every unit has at least one customer (internal or external) and should be “profitable”. Among shop floor experts (leaders) they recognize those with managerial talents to foster them as managers. Such elected managers already have trust relationship with employees, they know what they do and how much they depend on each other. Therefore he/she will listen the employees, involve them into decision and share results with them within management by all objective.

Kazuo Inamori (Funder & CEO of Kyocera Corporation): “So many people think only on their own profit. But business opportunities rarely knock on their doors.”

Key differences between “western” and “eastern” work culture approach

The key difference is that western has short run philosophy (year by year) and eastern has long run (lifetime). Western has “moving target” defined by yearly KPI’s and project-based improvement. Eastern has timeless, holistic, and transparently promoted values focused on human (worker) and team continuous self-improvement. Western has PUSH and CONTROL approach, eastern is PULL, COACH and SUPERVISE.

Western model motivates with wages and career development based on position (copy-paste management) - once manager always manager. Eastern motivates with work safety, career development based on leadership and competence capabilities and “shared revenue” wages – continuous improvement to stay manager. Eastern work culture philosophy assumes that a manager should rise out of production. They do not recognize career manager who change company every 2-4 years Experienced career manager they employ as consultants.

What is your choice?

How to adopt eastern model into western culture

The most common answer is: “We are not Japanese?” It is true we are not Japanese, but there are several western success stories (Lego, DM, Allseas, Statoil, Unilever, Heineken ...) in majority “the family” companies. We may conclude it is possible.

All these companies have a vision of their future – they work on long run. It is prerequisite. They have established trust relationship between management and employees. Its long journey and it depends on current situation but the earlier get started the earlier results come. Here are some very generic principles for employer or manager how to start:

1. Agree and commit natural (not financial) short term holistic objectives with every single team (organization). Be realistic but stretched with expectations.

2. Monitor team results (not individual) and make results transparent to the team on daily basis.

3. Promote PULL process approach. Give autonomy and delegate responsibility to the team to be able to achieve objectives on its own.

4. Supervise, listen and support team initiatives for change and improvement during period (including work contract dismissal with individuals). Coach all the time!

5. Recognize and promote leaders, foster with managerial skills and make them managers through continuous process.

6. Promote team reward (not individual) with 13th and/or 14th salary depending on realization of committed objectives. Try to avoid variable KPI based reward.

7. Continuously improve yourself as an employer-manager.

These principles may significantly differ from known managerial skills. Like Einstein said you can’t solve the problem if you use same way of thinking which created problem. The most difficult is to change yourself that’s why you need self-reflection (Hensei). If you support and coach (Gemba) you become trusted person. If you stimulate autonomy (PULL process - Kanaban) you are sending message “I trust you!” and the team get chance to respond with best result, minimum errors (Poka-Yoke) and synergy with assets (Jidoka). If not, replace the team leader and intruders.

Every individual employee (field worker, office worker or manager) in a company must know why he/she stays with the company, when is time to leave and/or when he/she may expect to be fired.

Companies which doesn’t have a vision of their own future do not invest in work culture improvement.