I have been working as a Sales Executive in a big IT company. When I joined here I had a boss who was one of those who gave extra efforts to his work. He did not work like a donkey but he always insisted in reducing work efforts and working logically.

A few months back he left the organization. After he was gone, we all missed him. My customers, vendors, my colleagues,  bosses whoever was there in the organization and worked with him was missing him. I realized that working is never fun but how many of us leave a mark on people while we leave? How many of us are remembered after we leave the organization?

There are so many people working in an organization that once they leave no one bothers to even think about them. You have to be special to make them remember you. They remember you when they are stuck just because you are not there. They remember you when the processes are affected because you are not there. They remember you when the culture changes after you leave. Every company has its own work culture but there are people who actually work and it depends on them what culture will actually prevail. No matter how and what policies are made but its effectiveness depends only on implementation. People work for themselves. Though on paper they are working for organization but in reality they are working for themselves, for their living. They create their own rules and policies and work accordingly. No matter how strict you want to make these policies but you can never bind an employee after certain level to use his own working logic.

We missed our boss because we could see the difference in the culture of the organization after he left. We realized that the processes were working on his rules and principals till he was a part of the organization but after he left the control of the culture was given to other people who believed that being strict and harsh with your juniors is good working policy so the culture changed. Today we have two teams in our area but both works in a different culture because bosses are different.

But the new culture was never effective. In fact we missed the past culture which was much easier for working, getting the projects and resolving issues. We all could clearly see the differences in the two cultures in the same organization:

These are just few but the point which I want to make is that the culture is for the people and from the people no matter how big the organization is. If an organization wants to create the culture according to the policies then they will have to ensure that their beliefs percolate down to each and every person in the organization. To make it fast and effective, companies needs to work from top to down while implementing policies.

While making decisions the companies use the top down approach but while implementation they use the bottom up approach. While new policies are set, the people at the bottom are set to shift their seats without making them understand the importance of the change. But it should be the other way. The decisions should be taken after taking inputs from down and then it top management should make decisions whereas implementation should percolate from top to bottom as the top management could better understand the importance of decision and can understand how their actions will impact the company’s working culture. After they have accepted the change, it can then be left to them to pass the baton to juniors.

I ask myself why are some people earnings more bucks, getting more promotion while others are stagnant? The answer to this is the culture they create. If one creates a win-win atmosphere, everyone is going to win including the initiator while if one tries to create a win-lose structure, he can hardly become a winner himself. This is because in any organization, no one can work as a single entity but all of us are interdependent and we need to work together. Why else do we call a group of people an organization? Imagine if everyone will choose to work for only themselves? How the work culture would be? How the office life would be? Should we not use Robots then instead of human beings? At least they will not make mistakes after they are programmed properly.

But this is not feasible because many things cannot be worked out with machines. They need the human touch and the relationship building. Then why some people only work like machines? They do not look up except their own KRA’s. They will not put any extra effort but only do what they are asked to do just like machines. I have seen a plenty of such crowd and faced problems while interacting with them because they think like machines and not like humans.

While there are mechanized people, there are some humans also which makes the culture of organization and they somehow reduce the heat of these machines. These are the people who are responsible for employee retention and companies very intelligently try to only retain these diamonds and rest is left to them. But for how long will these diamonds work for an organization? They may leave anytime for anything and then what will happen to the company? Can a company afford to be totally dependent on some people who are not there forever? They cannot. But still companies do these mistakes and depend on the few and after these few leave, the organization becomes vulnerable to difficulties and face new challenges.

I am not a very experienced person in the corporate world but I could definitely understand the intricacies. I can see the problems and sometimes solutions as well, the only difference is that I cannot take decisions .Like any other lower level employee, my authority and exposure depends on the bosses.