Company Culture - Does it really matter?
Early in my career, I assumed that one company was pretty much like the next in terms of work environment and culture. I could not have been more wrong. In my first job, practically every assignment was, “Here’s how we did it last time, go do it exactly the same way”; there was a detailed manual of every required calculation, and in the end other people decided whether or not to go forward with my work – it was drudgery. I changed companies and my first project was to resolve a specific performance issue of a new product in development. After only a few weeks, my boss’ boss said, “You’re in charge of resolving this issue, what do you think we should do?” It struck me that it was the first time after nearly 4 years in industry that anyone had ever asked me that! I knew then that all company cultures are not created equal. The autonomy and responsibility offered by the second company made work a joy – my ideas mattered, and I could directly impact the outcome of my projects.
The influence of company culture on day-to-day-life and to engagement and job satisfaction cannot be overestimated. When considering a role, be sure to ask about what it’s like to work there, how decisions are made, how responsibilities are divided, etc. Ask more than one person the same questions – their answers may differ. If you can, get a tour or grab a coffee with a prospective peer to get insights outside the more formal interviews.
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Over the years we’ve been exposed to Six Sigma, Juran, Deming PDCA, 8D, Dale Carnegie, A3, Shainin, and more. Each technique works pretty well, and has been demonstrated many times in a wide variety of industries and circumstances. At the core they are all essentially the same!
Each approach relies on an underlying logical flow that goes like this: [a] make sure the problem is clearly defined; [b] be open to all sources of information; [c] vet the information for relevance and accuracy; [d] use the process of elimination to narrow down all possible causes to the most likely few; [e] prove which of the suspects is really the cause of the issue; [f] generate a number of potential solutions; [g] evaluate the effectiveness, feasibility and risk of the potential solutions; [h] implement the winning solution(s); and [i] take steps to make sure your solution(s) don’t unravel in the future.
The differences between the paradigms resides in supplementary steps and toolkits. For example, 8D contains the important “In
Your team is marching through the tools of your company's chosen problem-solving approach. This is time not spent on growing your business or delivering cost reductions. Yet your customers are suffering, and they're not shy about letting you know it! Why isn't it working?
