Have you ever wondered if corporate culture can be organized onto types? I have. In a tiny nutshell, here are what is generally accepted in the HR world as the three types of corporate culture.
Expertise cultures. In an expertise culture, the key motivation of employees is for the employee to become an expert, building his or her capabilities in their discipline or specialty, and being as competent as possible. Delivering a high level of trust in the competency of its product or service is at the core of its relationship to the customer.
Participation cultures. “We’re all in this together.” Participation cultures often refer to themselves as family-like and pride themselves on being inclusive and collaborative, including the level of attention and inclusion of the customer.
Authenticity cultures. In authenticity cultures, power and influence is gained by demonstrating a commitment to the values and higher ideals of the organization and it mission. Typically, the goal is to provide the customer with intrinsic value that demonstrates a sense of caring for and desire to help them physically and psychologically reach their potential.
Why is this important? The first reason is that perhaps the greatest obstacle in getting good design thru the system is corporate culture. The second reason is because if you have intentions to increase innovation by building design thinking at scale, you need to know a lot more about corporate culture than you ever imagined. We cover this in much detail in our new book, Innovation by Design. Hope you enjoy it.