August 14, 2021 5 minutes read
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Today, many companies don't understand or undervalue culture. Culture is not only found in the social aspects of organizations, collective attitudes, and the vibe, but it's also a part of the overall picture. Business operations also have culture. People love their job because of the culture at work. While a company may seem great from the outside, the reality is that the job can be filled with frustration and angst.
Businesses that grow organically tend to have a whole range of technologies to help them make better decisions faster. This is both a recipe for success and a recipe to improve the company's culture. A company that empowers its employees to make better, data-driven decisions leads to a more productive and collaborative workplace.
It doesn't work in real life.
Organic growth is unpredictable and often unplanned. We saw the gap created by the Covid-19 pandemic, which tested businesses' ability for rapid technological development. All sizes of enterprises had to adapt to the digital-first shift quickly. They needed to create digital cultures that could be accessed remotely and integrate new API ecosystems and data analytics platforms to survive.
Employees are now more empowered than ever before to make data-driven business decisions. However, this has led to an unexpected paradox. There are many data sources available. This makes it difficult for teams to come up with different solutions to the same problem. As data silos form across the company and companies struggle for common ground, cross-company data sharing is becoming more difficult.
Related: Restructuring Your Business to Meet The Digital Age
Do you want to speed up or slow down?
Businesses generally found it beneficial to be forced to move to digital. Companies can move faster if they embrace technology. That is ideal. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, stated in a 2014 book called How Google Works that Google's success is largely due to its ability to move faster and better than its competitors. This advantage is achieved by sharing data throughout the company to enable more real-time decision-making.
What should data and decisions be linked around? What is an effective nexus, or central hub? Schmidt conveniently left this out of his book. Jeff Bezos, Amazon, and others continue where Schmidt left off. They claim that the goal should be to always start with the customer, and then work backwards.
These two points are, in theory, the key to unlocking the incredible digital success that tech giants like Amazon and Google have enjoyed. They have shared real-time data about customer behavior throughout the company.
Businesses can redefine their culture by allowing all employees to access the same data. This allows the organization to be more innovative and take on risk, but it does so in a controlled, iterative manner. This is the cultural element that allows teams to respond quickly to customer needs and act with agility and alignment.
Related: Why Digital Transformation is More about People Than Technology
Continuous customer-centric approach
Because of the data silos and complexity created by IT and business teams, they often clash or misalign. It is necessary to find a way for everyone to connect the data and make decisions. Because when everyone wins, nobody wins together.
Companies can overcome cultural barriers such as informational complexity and silos by incorporating continuous product design (CPD) methodologies. CPD integrates customer signals at every stage of the digital lifecycle. It brings together business and IT teams so that they can all agree on one version of truth. Digital cultures can be transformed by gaining a deep understanding of customer needs, behavior, and expectations. They become more agile, aligned and customer-centric, and are even more entrepreneurial.
We had to rethink how we work and connect with customers. This situation requires that businesses create their culture by changing the way they work. This culture is essential to give meaning to the business, ensuring customers have the best experience possible and providing the best products.
Big enterprises must balance a culture that encourages creativity and discipline. This will ensure that they don't crush the spirit of digital innovation. Companies that are able to manage all of the above will be positioned to lead their industries into a new age where great digital products can be created quickly and perfectly aligned with customer needs.
