Culture trumps policy, every time.

One of the key roles of a man­ager is to con­trol the work that their staff per­form. In a great num­ber of organ­i­sa­tions, this leads to a ten­dency to cre­ate a pol­icy, process or pro­ce­dure for every­thing. Good inten­tions, but an absolutely hor­ri­ble way to con­trol any­thing. As the title of this arti­cle says, cor­po­rate cul­ture trumps pol­icy, every time.

It doesn’t mat­ter how many poli­cies you have, or how well their writ­ten. In the end, an organ­i­sa­tion con­sists of peo­ple, and those peo­ple deter­mine how work is done. If the cor­po­rate cul­ture encour­ages greed, lazi­ness and under­hand­ed­ness, your poli­cies won’t be adhered to. Even in organ­i­sa­tions with rel­a­tively good cul­tures, there will still be a degree of inter­pre­ta­tion of any poli­cies, and staff will still adhere as they deter­mine appropriate.

While poli­cies have their place, what really dri­ves your abil­ity to con­trol the work your employ­ees do is pay­ing less atten­tion to the small details with poli­cies and processes. Instead, focus on the gen­eral cul­ture within your organ­i­sa­tion. If the cul­ture is one of fair­ness, where staff work together col­lab­o­ra­tively to reach organ­i­sa­tional goals, con­trol­ling work out­put takes care of itself.