The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture

Boris  Groysberg; Jeremiah  Lee; Jesse  Price; J. Yo-Jud  Cheng

Article | Harvard Business Review | January–February 2018

The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture: How to Manage the Eight Critical Elements of Organizational Life

by Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price and J. Yo-Jud Cheng

Abstract

Executives are often confounded by culture, because much of it is anchored in unspoken behaviors, mindsets, and social patterns. But when properly managed, culture can help them achieve change and build organizations that will thrive in even the most trying times. In "The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture," the authors describe eight distinct culture styles: caring, focused on relationships and mutual trust; purpose, exemplified by idealism and altruism; learning, characterized by exploration, expansiveness, and creativity; enjoyment, expressed through fun and excitement; results, characterized by achievement and winning; authority, defined by strength, decisiveness, and boldness; safety, defined by planning, caution, and preparedness; and order, focused on respect, structure, and shared norms. These styles fit into an "integrated culture framework" according to the degree to which they reflect independence or interdependence (people interactions) and flexibility or stability (response to change). They can be used to diagnose a culture and to model how likely an individual leader is to align with and shape it. The authors offer five insights regarding culture's effect on companies' success: (1) When aligned with strategy and leadership, a strong culture drives positive organizational outcomes. (2) Selecting or developing leaders for the future requires a forward-looking strategy and culture. (3) In a merger, designing a new culture on the basis of complementary strengths can speed up integration and create more value over time. (4) In a dynamic, uncertain environment, in which organizations must be more agile, learning gains importance. (5) A strong culture can be a significant liability when it is misaligned with strategy. The package includes four companion features: "What's Your Organization's Cultural Profile?" "How to Shape Your Culture," "Convergence Matters," and "Context, Conditions, and Culture."

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Performance Effectiveness; Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation;

Format: Print

Find at Harvard Register to Read

Citation:

Groysberg, Boris, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, and J. Yo-Jud Cheng. "The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture: How to Manage the Eight Critical Elements of Organizational Life." Harvard Business Review 96, no. 1 (January–February 2018): 44–52.

Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2020

Lojas Americanas: Project DNA and the 'People Machine'

Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin and Sarah L. Abbott

Lojas Americanas (“Americanas”) was one of the largest retailers in Brazil. Via its stores, digital platform and Innovation Engine, the company served more than 38 million people. In recent years Americanas had enjoyed rapid growth; growing from 98 stores in 2001 to 1,700 stores in 2019. As each store had its own manager, and there was a growing need for district and regional managers, meeting these human resource needs had become an increasingly large challenge. Compounding this, one of the company’s core talent management principles was that store managers should be hired from inside the company. This challenge was the genesis for what became known as Project DNA. Via Project DNA Americans executives aimed to: determine empirically the extent to which store managers impacted store performance; identify those characteristics that differentiated a good manager from an average one; and create a leadership training program to develop and reinforce those characteristics. To date, approximately 1,500 managers had participated in the training to date, and while it was still early days, initial results had been impressive. The question for Americanas’s management was: what could be done to improve and update the project? And, could the learnings of Project DNA be applied elsewhere?

Keywords: retail; Brazil; Data Analytics; training; growth and development; Data and Data Sets; Analysis; Training; Performance; Employees; Management; Retail Industry; Brazil;

Citation:

Groysberg, Boris, Eric Lin, and Sarah L. Abbott. "Lojas Americanas: Project DNA and the 'People Machine'." Harvard Business School Case 421-038, September 2020. View Details

Cite View Details Educators Purchase

In the summer of 2020, Jan Swartz, President of Princess Cruises, was persevering to lead her company back from the depths of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Diamond Princess, one of Princess Cruises’ 18 ships was the site of one of the earliest large outbreaks of COVID-19 outside of China. The outbreak led to hundreds of cases, at least a dozen deaths, media scrutiny, government investigations, and legal proceedings. In early March 2020, Swartz made the decision to pause all global operations of her company, the first cruise company to do so. Six months later, how could Princess Cruises restart operations safely and profitably?

Faculty & Research

The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture: How to Manage the Eight Critical Elements of Organizational Life

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author