Question

Leaders can change an organization's culture.

Select one:

True

False

Answer 1

True.

Leaders can definitely influence and shape the culture of an organization through his/her behaviour. Since, the culture of an organization is defined as the way its people interact with each other. Leader influences this by taking actions which set an example for its employees to be seen. This technique is usually called as Leading by example.

Take the example of Steve Jobs, who shaped the culture of the company from its beginnings. He used to tell Apple's employees to always put the customer at the forefront and then think backwards. He used to shout on people for doing ordinary work, but never praised them when they did some extra-ordinary work. This made the culture of the company very competitive and innovation oriented where high level of creativity is considered normal now.

Take the example of Jefff Bezos. All Amazon's subsidiaries run on the 14 principles, which are the brainchild of Bezos. He has set those principles such straight forward and binding to every employee where even HR uses those 14 principles for Annual/Quarterly Performance Reviews of each employee. Bezos has also instilled a culture of "It's still Day 1" at Amazon where each day is treated as a new day, forgetting the old mistakes, learning from them and thinking afresh how to solve customers' problems better and better in future.