Software runs my life

Month: July 2008

Renovation Advice

Renovate Homepage

I emailed the Expert at Renovate.realestate.com.au the other day, hoping to get some advice about a property that I was interested in. I never expected to get a reply, but I got one within the week! I thought that was the end of it, but I found today by chance that it has been posted on their website.

I decided not to take the chance on the property, which was a gutting decision to make. It came back to me this week, when the offer I had had accepted was also accepted with another party. Back to the drawing board, although at least the market is not getting any better.

The Top-Down effect

The org chart shows the culture flow

A company culture is something that is very difficult to describe, let alone create. One of the blogs I read, systematicHR, posted up an interesting response post which covers the top-down flow effect that a CEO has on company culture. I think the closing lines sum it up very nicely:

The CEO absolutely defines culture whether they intend to or not.  HR then further defines what that strategy will look like.

So what are some ways that a CEO can do this? Well I like realestate.com.au‘s approach of having a CEO blog and bi-annual company conferences where the CEO presents the company achievements, strategy and goals. Just engaging in this open communication helps create an open culture, but the real key is in the actual organisational strategy. As the post says, this strategy will directly dictate culture and will change depending on the nature of the business.

Having worked in a sales organisation almost 5 years I would say there is a very fine line between a competitive and a demoralising organisational strategy (and therefore company culture). The nature of sales people and cycles makes this line a fluctuating target. The two biggest things I believe are:

  • Consistency – client spread, discipline, sense of fairness
  • Communication – Competitive but still collaborative (teams help)

In the end I guess the key is to clearly communicate and inspire passion for what you do. People will pick this up whether it is active or passive and positive or negative. The moral of the story is be aware of your influence.

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