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Is corporate culture so important?
Strategic planning is done within the environment of the organization. A company’s organization consists of its structure, policies and corporate culture, all of which can become dysfunctional in a rapidly changing business environment. Even though the structure and culture can be changed, the company’s culture is very hard to change. Changing of corporate culture is often the key to successfully implementing a new strategy.
Most business people would be short of, to find words to describe this indefinable concept where some define it as the shared experiences, stories, beliefs, and norms that characterize an organization. Every time when we walk into a company, the first thing that strikes us is the corporate culture,i.e, the way people are dressed, how they talk to one another, the way they greet customers etc. The mode of marketing they choose should also be of the same way. It should get into the mind of the customers. Looking for new models should be carried down by keeping the organization, its mode of operation and the type of culture it have. The ad-agencies have to be extra cautious in this particular matter.
Sometimes corporate culture develops organically and is transmitted directly from the CEO’s personality and habits to the company employees. Successful companies may need to adopt a new view of how to craft their strategies to a future period of time, as it has become their prestige issue. The traditional view was that the senior management hammers out the strategy and hands it down to the lower levels and even to the agencies. Imaginative ideas on strategy exist in many places within a company. Senior management should identify and encourage fresh ideas from the groups who tend to be included in strategy making, i.e from Employees with youthful perspective, employees who are new to the industry and so on. Each group is capable of challenging company accepted view and stimulating new ideas. It should be the aim and the strategy of every company who wish to withstand for long, that too successfully.
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