Corporate Transformation

The first introduction of corporate culture dates back to the 1940s. In contrast to rational and control-based management, a relational and cultural dimension that encouraged cooperation and commitment to work developed. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, in the face of the difficulty of measuring these dimensions, measurable organizational elements came to the fore, with emphasis on employee attitudes, empowerment, status differences, interdepartmental coordination, and employee inclusion, which were characterized as corporate climate. Towards the end of the 1970s, more in-depth analyses of the invisible features of corporate life began to gain importance. The role, importance and characteristics of corporate culture were once again at the top of the agenda. Most importantly, attention turned to the effects of corporate culture on performance, its stages of development and its changeability. In recent years, it is now accepted that corporate culture is not a spontaneous phenomenon, but a manageable element that provides competitive advantage.

A nation’s history, social structure and culture are reflected in every aspect of its life. The values, norms and management styles of companies operating in that country are also affected by this influence. Ideas and behaviors influenced by national culture permeate corporate cultures, and even when a company expands internationally, organizational structures and processes embedded in national culture are carried overseas. Barlett and Ghoshal conducted a study on three nations and their companies that are the global leaders in business life. According to them, British companies developed under family management that emphasized personal relationships over institutional structures, and favored loose financial controls over technical and operational control systems. Until the Second World War, most British companies were examples of “family capitalism”. When they expanded overseas, either a family member or a loyal “servant” of the family was put in charge.

How did the “silent” protests that make a big noise in business life begin? Are we able to build safe cultures where employees can express themselves? In this content, where we discuss the silence of employees and the expression fatigue they experience; we touched upon the importance of the concept of “psychological safety” in corporate culture and its effects on employees. I first heard the concept of psychological safety 5 years ago from a foreign senior executive at an international meeting I was involved in. This executive emphasized that one of the main factors of employee loyalty and well-being was the concept of “Psychological Safety” and that it played a major role in the development of corporate culture. I thought that these two words, which I heard side by side for the first time in business life, had an important place in industrial psychology and I started to read about them.

Fearless organizations and agile work cultures are two important constructs that define the rapidly evolving business world. With psychological safety, open communication and continuous learning, organizations push the boundaries of innovation while building the capacity to adapt quickly to the competition. In this article, we take a comparative look at how to create fearless organizations and agile business cultures. In today’s competitive business environment, it is crucial for organizational success that employees can express their suggestions, ideas and requests, give and receive feedback about their work, and that these behaviors are accepted by others in the organization. This situation, called psychological security, shapes the behavior of employees. At this point, employees who feel safe are expected to avoid exhibiting negative attitudes and behaviors that will cause productivity losses in the organization.

The impact of a lack of employee engagement on the global economy is $8.1 trillion. For this reason, creating an inspiring workplace culture, maximizing the potential and vitality, well-being and prosperity of every employee, adapting the hybrid model that blends remote and in-office working, supporting the global work experience, and creating flexible, innovative solutions suitable for ever-changing dynamics is now a responsibility beyond the need for organizations and leaders. According to the 2020 Gallup research report, employee engagement has dropped to 20 percent worldwide. This means that 80 percent of the workforce is disengaged or, in other words, actively disengaged. Today, the impact of lack of employee engagement on the global economy is 8.1 trillion dollars. We are talking about 10 percent of the gross product lost to inefficiency.

Values are an indispensable part of corporate life that we are used to seeing on the walls of every organization today. How much do the values that should serve as a compass for our decisions reflect on the way we do business and our relationships? The function of the values that we attach great importance to when we talk about them cannot go beyond being decorations on the walls of the organization? Imagine seeing the following four values on the wall of a company you walk in the door of: “Respect, honesty, excellence and communication.” What kind of company would you think you are stepping into? Values exact a price. At the individual level, values interfere with human pleasure and self-interest. In the corporate world, values negatively affect profitability, increase costs and create a competitive disadvantage in the short term.

In the face of the speed of business life and competitive pressure, people need guiding principles. Organizations determine the values and principles appropriate to their fields of activity, structure them within the framework of ethical codes, ethical policies and codes of conduct, present them to their employees as a guide and make a commitment to the public. Generally, it is not enough to prepare documents, the basic understanding of the organization must be embedded in the corporate culture in order to turn expectations into reality. A corporate culture is formed by the behaviors of the individuals who make up that organization on the basis of their mind maps. Corporate climate, on the other hand, consists of processes and ways of doing business defined by the organization. The realization of this climate is embodied in the behaviors of individuals, teams and management. Today, writing codes of ethics is one of the main keys to the structuralization of organizations.

Values guide people’s decisions and behaviors. Values and related beliefs are behind all the important or unimportant decisions we make during the day. The decision to take a break from a long meeting at noon and go to lunch, or to order a sandwich and work and eat at the same time, or whether or not to report someone who is corrupt at work to the management are also based on values. In trivial decisions it is often not possible to recognize values and the underlying belief system. Values are recognized in important decisions and especially under pressure. But even then, people who have not been exposed to a systematic approach to values tend to adopt an interpretation that comforts them.

Values guide work behaviors and habits. Selecting values specific to the organization, matching these values with the values of the individual and value promotion efforts form the road map for human change. It is an individual and societal expectation that change is positive and beneficial. In this article, we focus on habits as one of the factors that play a role in activating change. Personality is a set of fairly fixed emotional states and behaviors that include innate characteristics and are shaped in the early years of life. Values determine the attitude towards life for individuals as well as for organizations. They are invisible to the eye, but reflect the culture and climate of the individual and the community. Crises are the times when values are at their sharpest. Organizational strategies are based on values. All decisions are based on values. Habit draws its strength from and supports these two. It defines almost automatic behaviors and has an important place in the routine of life.

For organizations, values make solutions expensive, time-consuming, lead to falling behind the competition in everyday practice and make life more difficult. For individuals, they interfere with self-interest and pleasure, and reduce excitement. Because values reduce surprises and provide predictability. Living by values matures individuals, reduces the need for control and prevents conflicts. After reading this article, it will become clear why it is difficult to realize values within the corporate structure, but if this is realized, it will be a satisfying and unique experience to work with colleagues who do not “leave their soul at the door”. The 6 stages of “building a values-based organization” are described in this article. It is the duty of managers to prioritize the work on identifying values and reflecting them in life.

A crisis is a situation in which the usual solutions are no longer valid. Every crisis represents an unstable situation with sudden and decisive changes. The Chinese curse those they are angry with by saying “may God leave you in an uncertain situation”. From the 1990s to the present day, crises stemming from the Gulf War in 1991, the current account deficit in 1994 and 1998, the earthquake in 1999 and the collapse of the banking system in 2001 have caused serious disruption to business life in Turkey and disrupted the distribution of wealth to society. Turkey has experienced uncertainty five times in the last seventeen years. Therefore, in the last quarter of 2008, we have been inoculated, in a sense, to the uncertainty caused by external causes and which has engulfed us. Any crisis is the result of mismanagement and is essentially a correction. This is why our banking system, unlike its counterparts in the US and Europe, entered the last crisis in a strong position.

Narcissistic leaders see themselves as a reward for the organizations and people they work with. Their relationship with their families is no different. Everyone around them is there to serve them, they are valuable to the extent that they fulfill their needs, and they are expected to become “invisible” when that need disappears. Because of their irrepressible lust for power, narcissistic leaders perceive expansion as development. As a result, they tend to increase their power by taking the company into businesses outside its core business. For example, Jan Carlson, who was the hero of all of us 15 years ago with the customer-centered approach he brought to the agenda with his book “Moments of Truth”, consumed the credit he received for his high performance at SAS by bringing SAS to the point of bankruptcy with unnecessary acquisitions.

In the past, the selection of employees was based on relations with relatives, friends and close associates. Later, objective data such as diploma information and demographic characteristics were used in recruitment. Interviewers, acting like human beings, started to conduct face-to-face interviews with candidates. Over time, however, it became clear that the subjective facts of the interviewing manager were more influential in the selection of candidates than the characteristics of the interviewed candidate. Strong organizations mean strong individuals. Today, it is seen that organizations that can match the right job with the right candidate have a significant advantage in achieving success. In order for the right job to meet the right candidate, the competencies required by the position must be determined in advance, and then the candidate’s compliance with these competencies must be measured.

Communication is like the blood flowing in the veins of an organization. Communication problems are at the root of most problems, whether in interpersonal relationships, systems or strategy implementation. Today, organizations that need to foster common sense, creativity and efficiency need to learn to communicate more comprehensively and meaningfully. Dialogue is a special form of communication at a higher level. It does not focus on who is right and who is credible, but explores complex and difficult issues from a different perspective. Through dialogue, people have the opportunity to develop their understanding and views, to gain new insights and methods. Dialogue is a fundamental method of interactive learning, especially in today’s world where teamwork and organizational learning are of great importance.

When people who are expected to serve the same purpose in an organization devote their energies to non-work purposes, to problems arising from relationships and to solving problems of their own creation, this leads to serious inefficiency. Richard Barrett called this situation “cultural entropy”. There are four main reasons why the energies of employees in the work environment go to solving problems arising from human relations or problems of their own creation. An employee who comes to an organization without a tolerant management approach, which is necessary for innovation and creativity, with the expectation of reflecting his/her creative potential, comes to work with only his/her body, leaving his/her soul and therefore his/her mind and emotions outside.

The biggest misconception of managers and HR professionals is that they believe that anyone can do seemingly simple, mundane tasks. For this, it is considered sufficient to divide the work into its parts, then to describe in detail how the work is to be done and then to supervise it. However, even the simplest job requires special skills. Organizational performance is based on the interplay of three factors: people, management quality and organizational culture. This is similar to the relationship between good seed, favorable climate and favorable soil needed to produce a good harvest. Detailed descriptions and explanations that break the work down into its component parts only enable “average” performance. As a result, after a while, I find that performance appraisal systems are forced to reward average performance.

In the current era of change and transformation, the use of technology in jobs is changing the skills and competencies that the people doing that job need to possess. In the coming periods, we will need more talent profiles with both cognitive skills and soft skills such as flexibility, creativity, adaptability and collaboration. In this direction, it will be inevitable that we will soon revisit our competency models and prioritize competencies that meet the needs of new norms.

Values guide work behaviors and habits.Selecting values specific to the organization, matching these values with the values of the individual and value promotion efforts constitute the road map for human change.It is an individual and social expectation that change is positive and beneficial.This article focuses on habits among the factors that play a role in activating change. For mindset management, we must first recognize our mindset. The part of our mindset that is shaped by culture is probably bigger and more important than we realize. Getting to know different cultures and trying to understand them without judgment will teach us a lot about ourselves.

In our education, we were taught that there were two conditions for the development of countries: First, rich underground and surface resources, and second, capital accumulation. Today, when we look at the most developed countries, we see that most of them do not have any significant underground and surface resources. On the other hand, since capital moves globally, it is no longer necessary for it to be located within a country. The advanced technology required for development today is based on qualified human resources. In the words of futurist Naisbitt, the determinant of development is not high technology (hi-tech) but high human quality (hi-touch).

Success orientation is one of the most powerful factors that mobilize and guide people in business life. “Organizational awareness” is one of the components of success orientation, as are “taking initiative, being proactive, being inquisitive and collecting information, paying attention to quality and order, creativity”. Institutional awareness is the ability to comprehend the power relations, values, priorities and norms of behavior that prevail in the organization in which one works. This approach allows the individual to recognize the power and efficiency of the organization. Organizational awareness is knowing how to use information about the organization to achieve business results. This knowledge is not always expressed in defined and prescribed behaviors, but extends to informal channels of communication and decision-making.