Recently, a great article by Henry Mintzberg from the July/August edition of the Harvard Business Review was distributed around Espresso’s offices for discussion, as we felt that it so corresponded with what we were trying to do with our organization. In the interest of sharing, I couldn’t resist getting further conversation going beyond our red walls!

In his piece, Mintzberg observes that there is a tendency for people within organizations to focus more on self-centric goals while completely blurring or ignoring those of the larger corporation. This is mainly attributed to the corporate culture that resides in most organizations. As he quickly pointed out in relation to the recent mortgage crisis: “Executives didn’t know what was going on, and employees didn’t care what went on”.

So how does an organization create a corporate culture that deters the focus from the individual to the internal corporate community? That question, of course, becomes increasingly difficult as you increase the size of the organization. For example, Zappos, a company renowned for its fantastic internal corporate community, has critiques questioning if this culture will hold strong since its recent procurement by Amazon.

With regards to this question, Mitntzberg suggests the following to establish a strong foundation for larger organizations (paraphrased of course):

• Seek your roots. Most organizations, at one point or another, had some sense of organizational community. Instead of attempting to build something net-new, look for what may have previously existed.
• Create an atmosphere of trust. In a nutshell, treating people as human beings not resources is paramount to building communities. A stronger emphasis on Theory Z Management above all else needs to be happening at the running of your ship, whether that ship is an entire company or a small team within a department.
• Define your raison d’être. Create a mission for everyone to stand behind and believe in. This isn’t something that it is simply put up on a wall, but something that can be felt through all corners of your organization. Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, and Wikiversity (a subset of Wikipedia) wishes to provide free education to the world. Each is strong statement that the company’s employees can truly believe in. No matter what your mission is, look beyond the dollars and cents and look towards something that inspires and motivates.
• Leadership at the centre. As opposed to relying on the top down approach from disconnected executives, rely on middle management to champion the transformation.

Once you have a strong foundation that can foster a true community-based culture, Mitntzberg suggests the following developmental steps:

• Seek small groups of committed (middle) managers to champion the change.
• Allow these groups to slow down and become immersed in the make-up of your company.
• Allow the insights of this process to spark small initiatives that drive change. (The beauty here, of course, is that such small initatives can quickly grow into much larger strategies.)
• Give visibility to the teams that are promoting change in order to inspire others.

As your corporate community begins to set hold, at what point can you confirm that a real community has been established?

For this, Mintzberg offers a well thought out measure of success. He states that a corporate community is truly established when “its members reach out in a socially active, responsible, and mutually beneficial ways to the broader community”. A company without a strong community couldn’t be expected to look beyond its walls, whereas an organization with a strong internal community quickly realizes their dependence on the external community and wants to give back.

So, whether you are a company of 40,000 or a company of forty, a true sense of community is pivotal. In this day and age, there are a multitude of technologies that can help foster internal community building and allow for it to spill out beyond the walls of your organization.

What is your company doing to foster its community?