{"id":900,"date":"2008-05-26T01:00:53","date_gmt":"2008-05-26T09:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=900"},"modified":"2008-05-26T01:01:25","modified_gmt":"2008-05-26T09:01:25","slug":"the-ceo-and-company-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=900","title":{"rendered":"The CEO and Company Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other systematic asks<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In a recent interview with one of our analysts, a Fortune 500 company\u2019s HR director said (not verbatim) \u201cIt\u2019s not HR\u2019s job to define our culture. It\u2019s the CEO\u2019s job. It\u2019s our job to communicate that culture.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I understand the position I have to say it doesn\u2019t sit fully well with me. What do you say?\u00a0 Should HR have more of a voice in defining a company\u2019s culture?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to say that while both HR and the CEO (or shall we just say the executive leadership) have a role to play in defining company culture, the lead responsibility really goes to the executive leadership.\u00a0 This is really based on a couple assumptions though \u2013 we first need to define \u201cdefine.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really up to the executive leadership to set the strategy of an organization (obviously).\u00a0 Company culture is strictly and often directly tied to the organizational strategy.\u00a0 If it\u2019s a sales driven organization, high touch customer service, or if innovation is the key that will drive short and long term profits, then there are certain cultural traits that will maximize those strategy drivers.\u00a0 So for example, if you\u2019re an innovative organization, I\u2019d guess that you\u2019re looking for a team oriented culture that is non-competitive and highly collaborative.\u00a0 You want people who are not afraid to ask questions, offer up what could be really dumb (on ingenious) ideas.\u00a0 By setting the organizational strategy, the executive leadership by default sets the company culture.<\/p>\n

While I don\u2019t particularly agree that HR\u2019s only responsibility is to communicate that culture, there is certainly some truth to the idea that HR\u2019s role is downstream to the executive leadership.\u00a0 I\u2019ll say however that it is much more important and much broader than simple communications.\u00a0 Instead, understanding what the corporate strategy is from the leadership team is, it\u2019s the HR teams role to further define and detail what those specific characteristics of company culture are \u2013 the executive leadership team will never get enough into details that HR would have a coherent direction to go in.\u00a0 What does that culture mean? How is it implemented?\u00a0 How does HR shape it so that the long term actually results in a workforce with the appropriate values?\u00a0 All of these are questions that need to be defined with greater detail.<\/p>\n

I hate \u201cmiddle ground\u201d answers, but I\u2019ll have to go with one here.\u00a0 The CEO absolutely defines culture whether they intend to or not.\u00a0 HR then further defines what that strategy will look like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other systematic asks: In a recent interview with one of our analysts, a Fortune 500 company\u2019s HR director said (not verbatim) \u201cIt\u2019s not HR\u2019s job to define our culture. It\u2019s the CEO\u2019s job. It\u2019s our job to communicate that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,28,10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-branding","category-communications","category-engagement","category-strategies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}