Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (17)
Similar to cultural advantage
Similar to cultural advantage (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
cultural advantage
- 1. SPE-167387-MS A Management Framework for Deriving Organisational Cultural Advantage in the Upstream Oil & Gas Industry Mr GLEN BURRIDGE (NDB Consulting) Prof PETER FRANKLIN (HTWG Konstanz University)
- 2. 1.Problematic - The Risk environment - Organisational Culture: Theory vs Reality 2.Cultural Advantage - Cultural Vectors: National-Network-Technical - A new Management Framework - Benefits - Recommendations Q&A
- 4. COMMERCIAL RISK 1. Significant organisational complexity 2. Huge capital outlays 3. Stakeholder confidence 4. Long-lead & uncertain rewards GEOPOLITICAL RISK 1. Innately Global 2. Numerous state & commercial partners 3. Social acceptability 4. Politically volatile locations TECHNICAL RISK 1. Reliance on critical insight & modelling 2. Significant persistent uncertainty 3. Complex & contingent workflows 4. Poor organisational integration
- 5. Organisational Culture: Theory vs Reality
- 7. NATIONAL NETWORK TECHNICAL Organisational Model: 3-way Cultural Vectors ORGANISATION
- 8. DECISION-MAKING FACTORS DECISION-MAKING FACTORS A Management Framework for Cultural Advantage: DECISION Cultural Values Analysis Social Network Analysis Knowledge Mapping Cultural Intelligence Influence Mapping Asset-Resource Matching Cultural Validation Organisational Alignment Optimised Asset Teams Prepare Enable Change CHANGE
- 9. Executing on organisation’s promise of Cultural Advantage: 1. Use framework to characterise organisational identity: Strengths & Weaknesses 2. Guage discrepency between organisation’s existing goals & strategies 3. Assess how organisation can respond to internal motivational & power structure 4. Define how organisational practice can play a part in driving cultural change - calibrate decision-making to motivational landscape - power of shared mental models 5. Sculpt team resources to assets: Full-field competency spectrum, not just standard asset team model 6. Ensure any re-structuring takes account of internal identity & external landscape 7. Conduct ongoing organisational cultural analysis to maintain & monitor effects Making the Change in Upstream Oil & Gas:
- 10. Internal Improved capacity for innovation Optimised decision-making Inherent cross-discipline integration Mastery of experience & knowledge Encourage deep-seated competence Superior tactical deployment of resources Organisational Benefits External Enhanced ability to perform operationally Wider choice of technical & organisational partners Greater strategic direction in operating environment Enhanced ability to adapt to uncertain circumstances Higher reactivity to new opportunities Greater long-term sustainability & adaptability
- 11. Important Assumptions Culture’s importance needs to be recognised before any such endeavour Culture’s role understood as a fundamental aspect of business Management recognition of Cultural Advantage – without it, all is doomed It’s diversity of thinking we’re seeking, whatever its origin Practices are what we’re trying re-orient, not values Performance is to be continually monitored for Cultural Advantage This is a recommended framework of methods, from which case-specific approaches can be taken
- 12. Recommendations: Turning Cultural Complexity into an Advantage as an Industry • Recognise cultural heterogeneity in all its forms as an advantage • Design organisations to harness its benefits (strategy, roles, structures, decisions) • Make organisational cultural advantage a management KPI • Learn from where it’s worked elsewhere • Measure & Communicate the extent of benefits
- 13. Final Thought: The Power of Mental Models for Cultural Advantage “If we feel mental models are compatible, we have established a meeting of minds and we are in our comfort zone” “If there is dissimilarity, this is likely to cause anxiety and time-loss in overcoming problems.” “Especially, if we cannot walk away because we are committed to cooperate with each other, as we are in most cases of professional interaction.” Henri de Jongste, Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts (SIETAR Conference, Tallinn, Sep 2013)
- 14. Q&A Paper # • Paper Title • Presenter Name Slide 14
Editor's Notes
- 1 min Good morning everyone In this presentation, I want to dispell some myths about Organisational Culture within the Upstream Oil & Gas Industry 1. That Culture’s role is over-stated; that it’s not a hard-core subject 2. If it does exist, nothing much can be done about it 3. That if it does exist, it’s all a matter of national background 4. And even worse, if it’s even more complex, you definitely can’t turn it around into an ADVANTAGE! Cultural Advantage: Seeing Cultural Complexity not as a barrier, but as a positive attribute to be understood & harnessed. In this presentation, I’m want to outline a very high-level management framework for how this might be done.
- 30 sec Here is the basis of the talk, where I will firstly and briefly outline the “Problematic” that organisations face in terms of their culture. Then, an idea as to how this might be turned on its head to transform what may be perceived as Problem to an Advantage.
- 30 sec So, the problematic we are dealing with…. ….the sheer, marvellous complexity of any grouping of people with an objective in mind… And just like in this picture (taken from one evening at the London Olympics, last year), in any organisation, some of those groupings will be obvious, some not……some in the light, some in the darkness
- 1 min The Upstream Oil & Gas business is a tough place to work: 1. It’s capital-intensive 2. It’s laden with myriad and persistent risks and uncertainty 3. Risk is at an organisational-scale And the difficulties of managing organisational culture are not ones that the victims themselves like to shout about. -> Yet, lead to poor performance in many indicators. -> At worst, in project failure or serious incidents. The entities we construct to counter that risk are often highly complex and represent a risk and uncertainty all of their own. Hence, large-scale, substantive and continued improvement is an imperative
- 2 min Even armed with our MBA organisational models, we are inclined to idealise organisations: e.g. in a hierarchal form, as a set of neat building blocks e.g. or, as a multi-nodal matrix of interactions e.g. as a neat jigsaw of inter-locking elements, each with a distinct role. Managers will try & impose a structure, but is it optimal for the organisation it is applied to? In reality, organisations look more like THIS!! And, even this is a simplification! No matter what central control is imposed, interactions are fluid, pools of influence, resistance, innovation or expertise develop -> Roles may become blurred and people communicate and coagulate naturally. -> Why this happens is due to underlying forces within the organisation and is not necessarily a bad thing….!
- 2 min The concept of cultural advantage, even if it is not explicited named as such, is of course already deployed - knowingly and unknowingly – in any major engineering enterprise. For the same reasons of risk-sharing, such projects are truly global at all levels. In some cases, it is particular national or regional expertises which are pertinent: e.g. wing technology Centres of Excellence in UK & Kansas for Airbus, or e.g. specialist Chinese cladders who worked on on the Burj Khalifa In others, it is an international network (a “brains trust”) that operates across national and professional boundaries to explore a particular topic or create ideas, e.g. regarding safety improvement or defining a new experiment. Effectively a broadband community of expertise, driven by passion or responsibility for a subject area. For others, it is a very clearly defined professional discipline working together, e.g. architects, subsea engineers, test pilots, materials engineers, HR or commercial specialists, each fulfilling a specific role.
- 3 min I’d like therefore to present a vision of our Orgnisations as subject to three principal inter-cultural forces: NATIONAL NETWORK TECHNICAL Each of us act on and according to, ……..influence and are influenced by ………each of these intertwining forces every day of our working lives. And an Organisation could be said to be characterised and shaped by their nature, extent and interaction. NATIONAL is the cultural force most studied & most associated with “difference”. Since WW2 a whole area of study grown up around this topic & is dominant area of IC study Draws in psychology, sociology, management studies, geography, linguistics Mature enough for its models to predict nature of national group interactions & provide tools for their validation NETWORK is the “attractive” force by which people associate based on choice Fuzziest & often mysterious. One most likely over-looked wrt to the other two. Effectively a social “stickiness”. Potentially extraordinary importance & receiving mounting attention due to the rapid inter-connectedness of people across the globe. Transcends traditional connectors of nationality, location, language group, religion etc through greater degree of choice-based tenets of personal values, interests & less formalised social associations Underlying sense of “connectiveness” may be social (e.g. class, norms, clans), institutional (e.g. university alumni, ex-colleagues), or any other common shared values (e.g. beliefs, sporting, political). Some such associations may be highly visible and obvious to all, some to only those who are “members”. TECHNICAL is force most closely attached to the very nature of the organisation’s reason-for-being: “Knowledge streams” For every substantial business activity there will be an accompanying cultural vector, which will point not just internally but externally (sometimes strongest). The more complex and/or specialised the activity, the more likely these associations are likely to develop & be more difficult to manage Despite attempts at more internally integrated, cross-skilled teams, these remain the exception. Except perhaps at management level, technical staff are rarely picked for their “integrative” qualities, with “teamwork skills” often implying need for collaboration rather than strong cross-cultural expertise per se, which requires a higher degree of integrative competencies and behaviours. (aka “INHERENT”, “ASSOCIATIVE”, “ PROFESSIONAL”?)
- 5 min Whatever the nature of your organisation, its success is predicated on successful execution of a Strategy made up of a series of decisions. It is at these decision points that your ability to harness the 3-way cultural spectrum will draw its greatest benefit. Even though these cultural forces are intertwined, in order to construct a framework for transforming their complexity into an advantage, it useful to break them out individually. Before going any further, it’s important to state this framework is a non-unique solution…..the majority of the techniques I’m making reference to are whole areas of study in themselves. Which exact method to use will depend on nature of organisation, degree of detail required, extent of identified issues. PREPARE: Establish & map real-life patterns of organisation’s: National: > Motivations (internal & external): CVA e.g. Hofstede cultural dimensions analysis of organisation & operating environment Network > Network structure & Communication: SNA e.g. Internal social network analysis Technical > Group use of know-how: KM e.g. Internal knowledge intelligence initiative 2. ENABLE: Analyse how organisation could harness cultural attributes to advantage: National > Deploy well-established & robust cultural value models: CQ e.g. CQ education campaign internally & CQ approach for external environment Network >Implications of SNA: Influence Map e.g. Use SNA for influence mapping Technical > Matching resources vs assets’ needs: Asset-Resource Mapping e.g. Combining Ki review, asset competency & tech strategy, conduct resource-asset matching analysis 3. CHANGE: See next slide….
- 30 sec What does this mean practically? An organisation’s success is predicated on optimising itself internally in response to the external environment it finds itself!
- 30 sec
- Q&A: 5 mins