The Ultimate Guide to Company Culture

Written by Caroline Forsey

@cforsey1

Nowadays, we hear about a company's culture a lot — including perks like free beer, ping-pong tables, and fitness classes at the office.

Company culture is a critical factor for acquiring and retaining top talent. Additionally, a good company culture can help your business succeed. In fact, companies with strong cultures saw a 4x increase in revenue growth.

But culture is more than just workplace benefits. At its core, a company's culture is the shared set of values, behaviors, and shared vision of that workplace.

What is company culture?

Company culture is the values, behaviors, and shared vision that contribute to the environment of an organization. An engaging, enjoyable company culture can attract talent, and can also inspire employees to perform at their best.

Additionally, a company culture clearly outlines your workplace's values, and ultimately drives your entire company under a common vision.

In a Deloitte study, 87% of organizations cite culture and engagement as one of their top challenges.

If you feel your culture can be improved but aren't sure where to begin, keep reading to learn about the different types of company cultures, and get ideas on how you might improve your own culture.

Types of Company Culture

1. Team-First Corporate Culture
2. Elite Corporate Culture
3. Hierarchy/Traditional Corporate Culture
4. Horizontal Corporate Culture
5. Clan Culture

Let's unpack the five main types of company culture and which one may be a good fit for your company.

1. Team-First Corporate Culture

As the name implies, a team-first corporate culture is one in which team bonding and cross-department collaboration are top priorities. In a team-first corporate culture, you're likely to find both formal and informal events planned to encourage strong employee relationships, including regular team outings or after-work drinks.

Additionally, a team-first corporate culture typically offers flexibility and a level of autonomy to ensure employee happiness. For instance, Netflix provides its employees with a full year of unlimited family leave, which allows employees the opportunity to decide what works best for them.

Netflix also encourages independent decision-making and a culture in which information is shared openly. These aspects of the culture are inherently team-first, as they emphasize the importance of collaborating and communicating with team members to ensure the company stays on track to hit goals without sacrificing an employee's individual needs.

2. Elite Corporate Culture

You'll want to consider companies like Google or Facebook when you think of an elite corporate culture, which is a culture in which innovation and forward-thinking are not only encouraged, but expected.

An elite corporate culture hires only the best, and values fast growth — ultimately, the employees of an elite corporate culture aim to become the trailblazers in their industry.

For instance, Gainsight, a SaaS company, demonstrates its culture's emphasis on innovation on its About Us page, where they state: "To change the world of business, you've got to have great captains". Additionally, one of their five values is "Stay thirsty: we believe in a totally internally-driven strive for greatness."

You might have an elite corporate culture if your company encourages each employee to think outside the box and push the boundaries of the status quo on a daily basis.

3. Hierarchy/Traditional Corporate Culture

In a hierarchical or traditional corporate culture, you'll find the bottom-line is always the highest priority — meaning a company with a traditional corporate culture likely makes risk-averse and data-driven decisions.

A traditional corporate culture likely enforces a dress code and has a clearly defined hierarchy. Additionally, a traditional culture has an established practice, which makes it difficult to implement new technology.

Bureaucratic organizations like the Department of Motor Vehicles is a good example of a hierarchy culture. This organization follows corporate procedures to ensure consistency and results.

4. Horizontal Corporate Culture

A horizontal corporate culture is typically more popular with small start-ups — as the name implies, it's a culture in which everyone pitches in and collaboration is critical. Since the company is typically young, a horizontal corporate culture is flexible in nature and encourages employees to use market research to refine their strategy.

For instance, take a look at some of these employees' reviews of Acorns, a software company with digital investment products: "[People in leadership positions] are great! I always received help from them when needed" and "Every person in the company is engaged and you'll get help from any person that you reach out to".

These are the types of reviews you'd expect to see for a horizontal culture.

5. Clan Culture

Last on our list, clan culture refers to a company with a "family-like" atmosphere. Typically popular with smaller companies and startups, clan culture suggests a high level of employee engagement and collaboration, and a strong emphasis placed on teamwork.

Additionally, with clan culture there's typically fewer levels of management between employees and leadership -- which means communication tends to be more informal and candid.

For instance, on Smile Brand's Glassdoor review, you'll see one employee wrote, "I've worked for Smile Brands for close to 12 years. I enjoy the family atmosphere and collective focus on supporting the practices and optimal patient care."

Company Culture Ideas

1. Offer impressive workplace benefits, like an on-site gym or unlimited vacation.
2. Focus on diversity initiatives.
3. Plan team-building activities.
4. Give back to the community.
5. Take action to help your employees' health and wellness.
6. Create a company culture manifesto or slide deck.
7. Collect employee feedback.

Now, let's review some common company culture ideas you can implement at your own company.

1. Offer impressive workplace benefits, like an on-site gym or unlimited vacation.

Typically, one of the first aspects you'll hear about when you discuss workplace culture is the benefits -- but free beer isn't enough to implement a truly impressive company culture. Instead, you'll want to ensure the benefits you offer exist to increase your employee's happiness, and align well with your values.

An on-site gym, for instance, shows your company's commitment to health and wellness. Alternatively, unlimited vacation makes sense if your company values autonomy.

If you're unsure which benefits are appropriate for your company culture, take a look at The Comprehensive List of Employee Benefits.

2. Focus on diversity initiatives.

A strong office culture can't exist without focusing on diversity. For instance, a survey by Glassdoor found 67% of people consider diversity an important factor when deciding where to work — to attract top talent, then, it's imperative you incorporate diversity into the workplace.

Additionally, diversity can foster innovation, and diverse teams perform better. To learn more about the benefits of diversity in the workplace, check out 5 Awesome Benefits of Diversity at Work.

3. Plan team-building activities.

To create a fun and engaging company culture, it's critical you implement both formal and informal events to cultivate stronger relationships among members of your organization. You might consider monthly team outings, or informal happy hour drinks after a campaign kickoff.

To ensure everyone feels included in the outings, vary the types of experiences you have with your fellow team members — for instance, one month you might commit to a charity event, and another month you might create an office fitness challenge.

Ultimately, a strong office culture can only exist once employees begin feeling more comfortable with one another.

Additionally, it's important your company offers opportunities for employees to engage with coworkers from different departments, for better company alignment.

4. Give back to the community.

To improve employee morale and give employees another reason to feel proud to work for your organization, consider offering employees the opportunity to volunteer for a local charity.

Charity events enable employees to bond with one another, and can also ensure your employees see first-hand how your company's values play out in real life.

For instance, ExxonMobil awards a $500 grant to a non-profit once a team of five or more employees volunteer for a combined total of at least 20 hours — this allows employees to focus on teamwork and strengthen employee relationships while giving back to the community.

5. Take action to help your employees' health and wellness.

Having healthy employees has proven to result in better productivity, lower healthcare costs, and fewer turnover rates — all critical components to a good workplace culture. Additionally, healthy employees are happier, which will likely lead to a more engaged workforce.

There are plenty of opportunities, varying in cost, to create a stronger workplace wellness program. You might invest in standing desks, create lunchtime yoga sessions, provide healthy snacks, or offer personalized nutrition counseling.

Alternatively, you might simply offer employees more flexible hours, so they can arrive at work early and leave at 4 p.m. to catch a cycling class, or arrive late after a morning meditation session.

Essentially, any steps you take to help employees feel better will pay-off in the long run. And, ultimately, you'll create a culture in which health is considered a top priority -- which is certainly a place I'd like to work, wouldn't you?

6. Create a company culture manifesto.

A few years ago, HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah created this Culture Code slide deck, with the purpose of answering the following questions for viewers: "What do we believe? What makes us tick?"

A powerful company culture manifesto or document is critical for attracting top talent, and can be used as a resource for recruiters and HR.

Additionally, a manifesto enables you to clearly outline what your culture is, as well as what you want it to be — essentially, it can work as a road map, guiding employees when making decisions regarding behaviors and values.

For instance, HubSpot's slide deck states one simple rule: "Use good judgment." This is a memorable statement internal employees can use when decision-making.

7. Collect employee feedback.

You'll never fully know whether your company has a strong and compelling culture if you don't regularly collect employee feedback.

By asking your employees how they feel, you'll be better equipped to recognize strengths in your current culture, as well as areas for improvement. For instance, maybe you'll find employees are unhappy with the lack of training programs your company offers.

This information can help you create a more targeted and unique workplace culture down the road -- one that focuses less on free beer, and more on long-term employee happiness.

If you need further assistance in developing your company's culture, consider checking out Delivering Happiness, an organization that offers workshops and online resources to help companies improve their workplace culture.

Words That Describe Company Culture

1. Trust
2. Integrity
3. Fairness
4. Learning opportunities
5. Collaboration
6. Teamwork
7. Autonomy
8. Accountability
9. Fun
10. Challenging
11. Innovative
12. Motivating
13. Comfortable
14. Rewarding

https://bit.ly/3dnz3QC

The three levels of culture - Schein

We are talking to a client right now about a project that involves a fairly strong change management component, and in particular an important element of “cultural change.” So I was looking up some concepts and frameworks focused around culture and cultural change, and came across some references to Edgar Schein. I had read his classic 1992 book “Organizational Culture and Leadership” a long time ago. It emphasizes the need to take organizational culture into account in any change management effort. Whether it is organizational learning, development or change, culture is likely to be the primary source of resistance.Schein basically defines culture at three levels:

Artifacts are at the surface, they can be easily observed, although not necessarily easily understood.
Espoused values are more conscious strategies, goals and philosophies.
Basic assumptions are the core and the essence of culture. They are largely unconscious, and therefore hard to discern.

The three levels get to the core of what culture really is (again, according to Schein): “A pattern of shared, tacit, basic assumptions that a group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that is considered to have worked well enough to be taught new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to these problems.”

Interesting and certainly valid, my only concern would be how actionable is really is. As Schein himself acknowledges, describing and changing culture is a notoriously difficult endeavor. He recommends an iterative and almost “clinical” approach, similar to the relationship between a psychiatrist and her patient. Whether all of us strategists have those clinical skills is another question. I’d be curious to hear about people’s experiences.

The Impact of Culture on Mergers & Acquisitions

by Gene Gitelson, John W. Bing, Ed.D., and Lionel Laroche, Ph.D., P.E.

According to a KPMG study, "83% of all mergers and acquisitions (M&As) failed to produce any benefit for the shareholders and over half actually destroyed value". Interviews of over 100 senior executives involved in these 700 deals over a two-year period revealed that the overwhelming cause for failure "is the people and the cultural differences". Difficulties encountered in M&As are amplified in cross-cultural situations, when the companies involved are from two or more different countries.

Seven Pitfalls on the Path to Merger Success

Merger success is possible; however, being part of the 17% that succeeds, rather than the 83% that does not deliver, requires more than insight. Merger success is based on acceleration, concentration and creating a critical mass for operational change (adaptation).

Up to the point in the transaction where the papers are signed, the merger and acquisition business is predominantly financial - valuing the assets, determining the price and due diligence. Before the ink is dry, however, this financially-driven deal becomes a human transaction filled with emotion, trauma, and survival behavior - the non-linear, often irrational world of human beings in the midst of change.

The seven pitfalls represent the critical and vulnerable areas of the M&A transaction. These areas must not only be valued for their negative impact on the critical success factors that drove the "deal", they are the very agenda for the organization's action in the critical first 90 days of the new entity.

In the case of international mergers and acquisitions, the complexity of these processes is often compounded by the difference in national cultures. People living and working in different countries react to the same situations or events in very different manners.

Therefore, a company involved in an international merger or acquisition needs to consider these differences right from the design stage if it is to succeed.

Pitfall #1: Preoccupation

In Canada, individual preoccupation with "How is this all going to impact me?" weakens commitment to the job at hand. This, in turn, translates into people looking for work in other companies. Often a firm in the midst of transition loses some of its own talent - strengthening the competition.

In countries where people identify largely with groups, people tend to look for support within their group. In France and Italy, people caught in the midst of a merger or acquisition often turn to unions. If unions cannot provide answers because they have been excluded from the negotiation process, they are likely to go on strike. These strikes may do much more damage to the organization than comparable Canadian strikes; for example, the strike by French railroad and subway workers in December 1995 resulted in the demise of the Juppé government.

What is less apparent is the pervasive loss of productivity of those who remain. Studies indicate that line employees and managers at all levels lose a minimum of 15% of personal effectiveness as a result of rumors, misinformation, and worry. They also indicate that teams tend to break down and become less effective during mergers and acquisitions.

To quantify these losses, determine the number of individuals involved, multiply by their fully-loaded hourly wage, consider just one hour lost to confusion, waiting for clarity, figuring out who should do what to whom (assuming you know who "whom" is) and a likely job search. This is how much productivity is lost per day to the company (and the new owners). Multiply this by 65 (there are 65 working days per quarter) and compare this number with the amount in gross sales revenue that the firm will have to generate to the bottom line to offset this loss in productivity.

The strategy: Acceleration. Speed the integration to reduce the uncertainty and anxiety. Delayed decisions to "ease the pain" only magnify and sustain the pain and prevent the company, the individuals and /or the groups from getting on with the work and their lives. In the case of international M&A's, ensure that both individual and collective concerns are addressed.

Pitfall #2: List-making

You may also call it compulsive-obsessive list-making; whatever the name, it's real. In the face of overpowering uncertainty and rising fears of insecurity, it will happen. Making comprehensive lists is a very logical response to one's world thrown upside down. Lists of things to do fill the space and suppress the anxieties; they even make sense, except to the bottom-line and the economic drivers that were the very basis of the merger.

As soon as the merger is announced and the first calls to action proclaimed, the reality sinks in. The "list" is overwhelming. Personal and departmental needs drive the allocation of resources. Quickly, as the days build, there is a widening disconnect between the financial and market-based goals of the merger and real-time allocation of effort.

Tolerance for uncertainty varies widely around the world and this variation can play havoc in international M&As. For example, Mexicans tend to require more structure and definition of their role and responsibilities than do Canadians. When a Canadian corporation acquires a Mexican company, its Mexican employees are often looking for information and structure that is not forthcoming, because their new Canadian managers deem it unnecessary. The Mexican organization often grinds to a halt, since Mexican employees are unlikely to go and ask for the information they need, since this may be viewed in Mexico as questioning management's authority.

The strategy: Concentration. During the first 90 days, focus and get everyone to focus on the 20% of the goals that yield 80% of the economic value. Dealing with uncertainty explicitly is critical to the success of M&As.

In the case of international M&As, the economic value of a foreign organization may not be where its Canadian partners expect it. For example, a Canadian company acquiring a company operating in a country where the government controls much of the economy may find that the value of its new acquisition lies more in the personal ties between its managers and high level government officials than in its quality of service.

Pitfall #3: Organizational Proliferation

In Canadian organizations, many task forces, committees and integration teams are created to handle all the lists and to plan new lists. Integration structures and transition teams designed to be all-inclusive and to represent a sign of "new partnership" will weigh heavily on an organization seeking to keep its eye on its customers and the market. More effort will be placed on temporary rules and reporting relationships than the work itself.

In the case of international M&As, this issue is compounded by the fact that organizational change is brought into companies in different ways in different countries. For example, in countries where the sense of hierarchy is much stronger than in Canada (like France and Mexico), change is brought about from the top and employees at all levels expect new directions from their managers. This may paralyze cross-cultural M&As, since top Canadian managers expect input from these teams and committees, while French members of these committees and teams expect direction from their managers.

The strategy: Accelerate, concentrate and adapt. Form small, agile, quick-acting teams, including people from both sides of the M&A, with a clear mission and empowered integration team managers with direct access to senior management and to their support. Transitions do not need to be demonstrations of democracy in action.

Clear leadership and strong support is essential to these teams; without it, they often break down into sub-teams (one sub-team for each side of the M&A). This is particularly common in the international case, since language and cultural differences create significant communication issues.

Pitfall #4: Infrequent and irrelevant communication

Fear and a lack of all the answers deters top management from providing the information that customers, shareholders and employees need to redirect their action to the value-added of the deal. Rumor fills mystery and vacuums. When there is communication, it often lacks information and substance that explains and supports stakeholders' interests.

In many international M&As, the working languages of the two organizations involved are not the same. Communication can break down even when the employees of the foreign M&A target speak English. Consider the case of a Norwegian - American joint venture. Because Norwegians tend to be more relationship-oriented while Americans tend to focus on tasks, the parties almost came to blows over when and how to bring the discussions to a conclusion. The Norwegians complained that they had not built up enough trust to negotiate final details and needed more time. The Americans responded that they could not waste valuable time on further meetings and that the matter should be settled by the legal team. Tension decreased when the teams realized that their goals were the same but their ways of achieving them were quite different; a deal was eventually struck.

The strategy: Accelerate, concentrate and adapt. Frequent communication, repeated at least 7 times through multiple avenues - print, voice mail, e-mail, meetings, and video. In times of stress, the "noise" of survival and uncertainty drowns out the message. Over-communicate and remember that responsibility for a message being received lies with the sender as well as with the receiver. A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 124 mergers indicates that those firms that implemented effective communications strategies showed better results in customer focus, employee commitment and productivity than those firms that had a delayed communication strategy.

In the international case, communication often requires translation as well as adaptation. Indeed, the best way to make a presentation and to reach an audience differs from country to country 1. The communication strategy needs to take communication style preferences into account, as in the Norwegian - American example mentioned above.

Pitfall #5: Triangulation

Without clear lines of authority and clear understanding of where they fit in, employees and managers are caught in a web of conflicting objectives and old loyalties. This type of organizational and personal strangulation robs the new entity of the very energy it needs to overcome the losses in productivity.

The tolerance for "fuzzy", temporary organizational charts and decision-making processes depends on the countries involved in the merger or acquisition. In hierarchical countries, like the Philippines, both organizational chart and chain of command need to be clearly defined, more clearly than in Canada. If employees do not understand them, paralysis often results. A Filipino employee reporting to two managers, as in a matrix organization, will likely be quickly overwhelmed. He / she interprets the situation as having to meet two complete sets of expectations and perform two separate jobs. For Filipinos, asking managers to discuss their conflicting requests would be viewed as insubordination.

The strategy: Concentrate and adapt. Concentrate on substance rather than form, and focus on helping people adapt. Management needs to provide the information that people need to be comfortable with the new organization; this information depends on people's cultural backgrounds. In Canada, people need to know how they fit with the value drivers rather than short-lived organizational charts; such may not be the case in other countries.

Pitfall #6: The relatives

Not the "in-laws", but the relative forces of time and space. Time in a merger is accelerated, compressed and merciless. In Canada, publicly held companies need to show clear results at the end of the first quarter after the announcement. Individuals going through a merger have to work at an accelerated pace at the very same time that the inner adaptation of change - personal and psychological transition - weighs them down and operates on personal, rather than linear time.

Change is easy; inner adaptation is not. And time is relative - the leaders started their adaptation to the new reality far before those who learned of the merger on announcement day. The leaders have ridden the wave and are way in front of this shock wave now crashing down on the others. They wonder about why people don't seem to "get it" and often mistake shock and confusion for resistance to the new realities.

The concept of time is also related to culture. While long-term in North America tends to mean three years, it means up to 30 years in Japan. Consequently, Japanese strategy discussions are likely to take into consideration events that Canadians consider irrelevant, since they are expected to take place beyond the Canadian planning horizon.

Space is also relative. In an increasingly virtual world, those not "connected" in the same space and time feel disconnected from the decisions and the center of the action. Irregular and incomplete communications at headquarters becomes a daunting challenge for those who live in different time zones, regions, countries and organizational units.

The strategy: Adapt. Adapt to the realities of change and transition - they are different experiences and each individual will have their own way of going through them. Help guide and support employees through the endings that they need to come to terms with before you expect them to embrace the new world. Provide temporary structures to enable people and departments to navigate between the old ways and the new. Actively manage the merger across time, space and organizations, keeping in mind the different concepts of time and space that may be at play. Create the appropriate communications tools and the accountabilities and standards that will enable the organization to better operate across time and space.

Pitfall #7: The guiding light

At a time when leadership and active management is most called for, the stress and uncertainties associated with the merger causes an inward focus and a retreat to safe and high ground. More leadership is needed, at this time, than less. One of the primary roles of a leader is to articulate a vision and inspire others to join in that vision. Proclaiming a new vision and handing out laminated cards, however, does not create a new vision for the new entity. A clear new vision captures the critical success factors and economic drivers that brought the entities together.

In the case of international M&As, the need for leadership remains, but the nature of leadership changes. Being a good leader requires different skills and attributes in different countries. For example, charisma and a positive personal image are important attributes of leadership in the U.S., more so than in Canada.

The strategy: Adapt. Only a new culture can create the context for true change to happen and hold. Changing culture means changing behavior. One of the quickest way to effect change and create the new company is to place in all key positions those individuals who are true representatives of the new culture and who can lead effectively people on both side of the company's cultural divide. These people are the role models who demonstrate, with the visible active support of senior management, what the new culture is.

Conclusion

These pitfalls of mergers and acquisitions challenge today's leaders to a new standard of managing change. The strategy is clear - accelerate, concentrate, adapt, and in the case of international M&As, consider cultural differences. The human and cultural issues that separate the 17% from the 83% are not about some abstract values or the "soft stuff", but the concrete reality of productivity, economic value and sustained growth.

References
1 "On with the Show", L. Laroche, CMA Management, December 1999 / January 2000.

Helping Global Teams Compete

In global organizations, every team intervention - from measuring team performance to team development training to other consulting initiatives - needs to consider the dynamics of global teams. The definition of "good team member" varies from country to country. The concept of "effective leadership" may also differ. As a result, global teams sometimes find themselves reconfiguring into national collections of sub-teams - that is, a Japanese subteam, an American subteam, a French sub-team, and so forth - that may misunderstand each other's expectations and approaches.

Cultural values

An underlying cause of the success or lack thereof of global teams may reside in the definition of what it takes to be a good team member or leader. Cultural values play a significant role in these definitions. For example, a French team member may jump in to assist a U.S. colleague he or she perceives is in need of help. Americans, however, generally have a strong desire to act as individuals; thus, the U.S. team member might interpret the French colleague as undermining his or her job by interfering.

Cultural and language differences

In addition to whatever else might be at the root of global team issues, cultural and language differences obviously add to the complexity. It's important to acknowledge those differences up front and create opportunities for discussion of different perceptions. If you're able to leverage these differences, you can improve creativity and add value to your global team.

Miscellaneous interferences

Other reasons may exist for a global team's sub-par performance. Its problems may stem from a specific team leader's approach, a lack of organizational support for the team, or because individual rewards overshadow team success. In such cases, training to build a global team may fail because you didn't know or address the real reason for poor team performance.

Why use measurement?

Global teams, because they represent significant corporate investments, require proactive attention and preventive maintenance, which are always preferable to disaster recovery. A proactive approach - taking the team's temperature periodically - can help identify if and when it needs training and what kind of training.

A proactive approach positions the training professional as a strategic thinker - someone who brings value to the business by detecting problem issues early and preventing them from getting bigger. The training professional becomes a business partner with a bottom-line focus. Measurement techniques using appropriate tools can also help management compare many global teams within the same business sectors, adding to management's capabilities.

Unfortunately, it usually isn't until a problem arises that management calls on the training provider for help. Requests for team development interventions after the fact - after a client already believes that training is the solution - usually means one of two things: The team leader knows he or she needs help, or the team leader may have attempted other solutions without positive results. The leader, or his or her manager, then calls on the training and development professional to provide a solution.

Even if providing team training addresses the problems, it may be at considerable expense to the business. For example, consider the costs associated with time lost on the job. With global teams, add to that the cost of international travel. Business leaders value preventive measures that save such costs.

Instead of waiting to be called on after a problem is identified, use a proactive measurement approach to get useful information on the state of the team. Team leaders can use the same information for self-development. If you provide your findings to the leader and the team, you are training the team on how to interpret information. In that way, team members learn how to analyze and interpret issues, which, in turn, reduces the need for additional development by outside consultants. By sharing team findings and using the ensuing discussion as a team activity, you've already conducted an intervention.

Outside intervention

Using the proactive measurement data, the team can also, if necessary, make its own decision to call for outside intervention. For example, a global pharmaceutical drug discovery team (made up of medical scientists) used an instrument designed to analyze communications and other team functions. They discussed each other's answers to the tool's questionnaire and discovered a disparity of views among team members. By reviewing their answers before proposing an intervention, the team was able to define team issues together. That discussion led to accepting an intervention that addressed the topics on which they agreed they needed help.

Combining team training and leadership development

A global team leader, alerted by low team scores on the topic of understanding roles and responsibilities, decided to use an orientation for new team members as an opportunity to lessen the confusion. In a meeting, the leader asked team members to describe their roles and responsibilities briefly for the newcomers. She combined team training and leadership development and doubly improved the team.

Conducting periodic measurements provides a team and its leader with baseline information against which they can measure changes. They can also use the data to answer these questions:

• Where was the team when it started?
• Where are they now?
• Did the last intervention make a difference? If so how much?
• On what specifically do we need to provide a more focused training intervention?

One size does not fit all

Even when you can resolve team problems by training, one type won't fit all teams, especially global teams. If diagnosed dysfunctions remain after the team leader attempts resolution, it's necessary to provide training on those issues. When neither training nor leadership development works, however, the solution may be a change in team leadership. Working in partnership with business leaders, training and development professionals can help smooth those kinds of transitions.

Proactive, periodic team measurement benefits global organizations by reducing the amount and expense of training and by focusing necessary training on identified problems. Questionnaire results provide a baseline against which you can measure team changes. To develop team leaders, use the questionnaire to identify ways for them to resolve issues in regularly scheduled team meetings. Training interventions that take into account cultural and value differences create stronger global teams. By comparing measures across teams, management improves its oversight and support of such teams.

And, most important, the proactive approach positions training professionals as strategic thinkers committed to improving the bottom line.

John W. Bing is Chairman, ITAP International, and Catherine Mercer Bing is Managing Director, ITAP Americas, in Princeton, NJ, USA.