Organization and Organizational Culture

Strategic planning happens within the context of the organization, the firm’s structures, policies, and corporate culture, all of which can become dysfunctional in a rapidly changing business environment.

Corporate culture has been defined as “the shared experiences, stories, beliefs, and norms that characterize an organization.”

A customer-centric culture can affect all aspects of an organization.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car featured its own employees in a recent “The Enterprise Way” ad campaign. One ad in the campaign, themed “Fix Any Problem,” reinforced how any local Enterprise outlet has the authority to take actions to maximize customer satisfaction.

Whereas managers can change structures and policies (though with difficulty), the company’s culture is very hard to change. Yet adapting the culture is often the key to successfully implementing a new strategy.

Organizations develop strategy by choosing their view of the future.

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group has pioneered scenario analysis, which develops plausible representations of a firm’s possible future using assumptions about forces driving the market and different uncertainties.

Scenario planning
Managers think through each scenario with the question “What will we do if it happens?,” adopt one scenario as the most probable, and watch for signposts that might confirm or disconfirm it.