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Driving Quality by Creating Culture

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ISR (now Towers Perrin) has an interesting case study on the creation of culture.  Specifically in this case study, they focus on building a culture that is focused on quality, but the principles they share could really be used to develop a culture to support any strategy whether it be quality, innovation, or anything else.

“…there must be alignment between its business strategy and organization culture. Alignment is achieved when the shared beliefs, values, and ways of working within an organization drive the realization of goals and objectives. Of course there is no one-size-fits-all culture that best promotes business success. A company’s most desirable cultural qualities depend on the particular business strategy the organization is emphasizing. A culture that best supports a strategy for quality will look different from one supporting a focus on innovation.”  ((ISR, 2005.  “Building a Quality Focused Culture.”  Retrieved from ISRinsight.com.))

Their list above of drivers of quality are going to be different for each organization and you’ll want to determine the right mix of drivers for your particular situation.  Indeed, you may have a different set of drivers for different parts of your organization or business functions.

In Figure 5 (as usual, I’ll support the site by asking you to download the PDF), they show the linkage between the end result of quality, the drivers above, and key drivers.  For example, one strategy for quality might be in enhancing the process focus of your organization.  Upstream drivers such as training, performance management and teamwork might all feed into the one driver of process focus to support the quality strategy.

What is especially great about this article is not that it’s about HR creating a corporate culture.  We already do that.  What is exciting is that more people are talking about the creation of strategies within HR that support the organizational strategies of the business.

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