Culture of Excellence is rooted in the Organizational Culture. Organizational cultural has been explained by Schien as “A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to these problems” (Schein, 1992).
Exploring the underlined words from a realistic perspective brings certain interesting and probably true scenario:
a. “pattern” implies a design, a way but it also means that it is evolves over a period of time. Hence, the culture would be dynamic. Hence an acceptable pattern today may not be so tomorrow.
b. “shared” thoughts are always been a dream in the management world. Where does one stop in sharing? Is good enough if one communicates to all? Often the sharing begins and ends with display of values or other artifacts of culture of an organization.
c. “learned” implies that the culture evolves as one learns from the experience. Learning from experience needs to move from Primary learning to Secondary learning. Primary learning can only provide us the immediate feel and are often reactive. Secondary Learning enables absorption of experience that has potential to change our way of life or subsequent response to the experience.
d. “external adaption and internal integration” of the learning would ensure conversion of what we learn into practice. Adaptation to the external stimulus has been essence of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. In organisational context the experiential learning needs to be adapted to match the changing business environment.
The same experience would require to be integrated with organizational practices. As a change in practice with integrating with larger system in organization can lead to suboptimal conditions and hence unstable culture. It necessary to distinguish between change and instability. Change is desirable but not instability.
The practice must lead to benefits to the internal stakeholder like employees and to the external stakeholders like customers, vendors.
e. The experience and learning must be “valid” enough to facilitate reinforcement of the communication of cultural aspects.
f. The culture symbols and practices that represents culture needs to be “taught” to the new employees. This is necessary as every individual comes with his /her own cultural “baggage”, which may not be in sync with organization culture. It is the responsibility of every individual to showcase the culture and enable absorption of the new culture (at times it could be a cultural shock) by the newcomer.
g. The newcomers would need to perceive, think, and feel the culture of excellence. This means the members in the organization would need to walk the talk.
Culture is understood by the Artifacts that represents it. Culture of excellence would possibly be indicated by various measures or system. For example, the quantum of innovation may indicate the excellence culture.
Values would relate to the attitudes and opinions regarding reality and how Innovation (in above example) should be handled. This has to be built into the strategies, goals and philosophies of the organization. In case of the example of Innovation, one would need to see if Innovation has become part of whatever the organization values. Innovation should be part of strategy, organizational goal and the organization must believe in it.
Basic Assumptions about organization, its people and business environment must be conducive to the building culture. There basic assumption relating to the innovation, for example Tolerance to failure would be key characteristics to fuel the innovative mindset. Reinforcing assumption becomes key to the value system and then becomes an integral part of the culture.
