Q. How could a CEO change a company from one with a hierarchical culture to one with a competence culture?
Fire everyone and start over. There has actually been some psychological research on this. It is virtually impossible to change a company’s culture because it becomes ingrained in everybody that works there.
The only way a culture is ultimately changed is if it is forced from the top and eventually all of the people who were comfortable under the old culture either are fired or leave. It may take two years, but you essentially do 100 percent turnover or close to it.
A competence culture is not suited to all businesses. It’s suited to innovative high-technology businesses, and that’s where you typically find them.
In a high customer service, high-touch company like Nordstrom’s, it’s not a suitable culture. Culture there is more of a family culture. It depends on what their mission is. Wal-Mart is a top-down, hierarchical culture because it’s all about low costs. You don’t have to have enormous discipline.
Q. Once you have a group of employees who fit your culture, how do you keep them?
Our style is not to micromanage them. They are given an area of responsibility and the freedom to go off and make that happen. They are assumed to be an expert in what we have hired them to do, when given a pretty minimal amount of someone staring over their shoulder.
For those kinds of people, they really love that environment. There are many other types of people who do not like that environment. Some people feel at a loss; they don’t know what they should be doing every day. They really want the constant attention. Those are the type of people who don’t do well at SmartDraw.
Equally, people who want that freedom don’t do well in an environment where someone is breathing down their neck.
The first thing that helps us retain people is that we made a good fit to begin with. It meets the employees’ needs as well as ours. Their working environment is something that they value.
The second thing we do is try to stay competitive from a compensation point of view. We use salary surveys; we try to stay in the market or compensate fairly and well.
How to reach: SmartDraw.com, (858) 225-3370 or www.smartdraw.com
