In recent years, interest has grown to study and understand the Culture of companies and its relationship with the success of those that have managed to perceive on the subject, a true way of differentiating themselves before customers.
The evolution of cultural issues occurs with increasing agility, the main causes are the migration of people and the agility of communication processes through technology, because through these two events “we know that there are different ways of live and coexist "
A few years ago, traveling and seeing other countries was less common and less frequent than today. The people who traveled returned to tell about the experience they had during the trip and usually the stories were accompanied by expressions such as: “things are different there; The food, the transport systems, the way of dressing, the weather, the expressions of the people, etc. " Without a doubt, within all these lived experiences, what was perceived were "Different Cultures".
In the past, Cultures were much more static than now; Changing patterns, habits, customs or traditions was very difficult because there was not much to compare against, what we assimilated generationally was not questionable and our behavioral traits should be a replica of our predecessors, so that we were socially accepted.
The evolution of communication processes, increasingly using technology as a strategic ally, has made information flow much faster than our common processes of thought and logical reasoning, it has even limited and accommodated us, since now it is easier to find the answer through a communication device and an Internet connection; and it is less and less common to spend time to think and structure ideas and even, organizationally, it is less common to carry out practices such as brainstorming, all this under the logical premise of “Why invent sugar water” or “Why invent the wheel, if someone else already invented it "
Conocer otras Culturas y obtener información de ellas con más rapidez, inconscientemente nos está llevando a perder nuestra identidad, ya que con frecuencia imitamos lo que apreciamos de los demás; lo que nos gusta, lo que admiramos y quizá hasta lo que envidiamos. Por estas y otras razones nos convertimos en imitadores de otros; Para efectos prácticos, en lo que se refiere a el tema de Cultura, estamos evolucionando tan rápidamente que nuestras generaciones hoy, son todo lo contrario a las generaciones de hace 25 años.
This evolution applies to all areas in which we interact and interact with other people; Starting with the family perspective (the first organizational approach of people), today it is difficult to share the same interests and ways of thinking between parents and children, some mention an imminent loss of values in the new generations, perhaps without being so radical, we can say that there are new interests and therefore new values.
Within families there is a first cultural shock, which occurs when the union of two people is consummated, who have different origins and who both represent and respect different cultures, being for practical purposes the union of two sub-cultures, which in function of a time will come to form a single culture, with its own behavior patterns, which are normally transferred to the new descendants, especially to the children and sometimes to several subsequent generations.
However, the phenomenon of cultural transformation occurs again in the same way when children develop their own sub-cultures, through the development of their own family nuclei, and thus history will repeat itself endless times.
From a social perspective, there is an imbalance in the culture of countries, cities, towns or communities. In most social conglomerates, there are foreigners or foreigners, whether they are people who have assimilated or through habits, customs, traditions that are being assimilated, as a consequence of the influence of someone or something that takes center stage over time.
This cultural example is perhaps the one with which most of us are familiar, since most of us in the first years of formation, we study some aspects related to our history or the history of other countries; Directly or indirectly what is transmitted to us is the evolution of the main cultures that have marked the history of our humanity, of course; Most stories tend to highlight the positive aspects of each of them.
From a third perspective; Within companies, it is also indisputable that there is a process of cultural transformation; perhaps it is the most complex and determining perspective for the short term. All organizations have an implicit culture, which represents the way of thinking and acting of its members; Without exception, all those that are part of the production processes that make up the company's value chain, and even more, also those that are part of the links that do not generate value to the company, but that undoubtedly exist and that for practical effects are those that most damage organizational cultures.
The cultural transformation of companies is evolving very rapidly, unlike the transformation of the cultural schemes of families and societies, the transformation of business cultures is agitated by the demands of customers, which makes them imperative, so it is not optional to be able to survive in competitive markets.
With regard to family and social perspectives, we are obliged to change, modify behaviors and transform our way of thinking and acting, but most of the time, the levels of demand are determined by us and generally those levels of demand they are slower and less ambitious; They are simply ideal.
The processes of cultural strengthening or cultural transformation are not casuistic processes, they are strategic processes; sensitized, consensual, formalized and technically structured. They respond to plans, generally they are aligned processes or support processes to the strategic objectives of contemporary organizations.
In the first scenario, the processes of cultural strengthening occur, when after a previous analysis, we come to the conclusion that our organizational culture is positive and is appreciated by customers, in this case the effort is focused on maintaining the culture; While in the second scenario, cultural transformation processes occur when we see the need to promote changes in our way of thinking and acting, when we consciously perceive customer dissatisfaction.
In the same context as that described at the beginning of this essay, the cultural transformation of companies is also influenced by the migration of people and the agility of communication processes through technology.
Regarding the migration of people, it does not necessarily refer to the hiring and inclusion of foreigners within the organizational structure, it is enough to hire and include collaborators who have worked in other companies and who usually contribute new knowledge or experiences, to through the expressions “there we did it differently; We didn't do this there ”.
And what to say about the communication processes; The comparison between the means, forms, practices, systems or processes that companies use to offer products and / or services to customers is the subject of permanent analysis and evaluation, through administrative practices such as Benchmarking, which do not it is an isolated issue, because when we copy or assimilate these means, forms, practices, systems or processes, we are copying and assimilating the cultural traits that are implicit in each of them.
This mixture of human and technological experiences, when translated into actions, forms the Organizational Culture, which for many is subjective and intangible, but for people who care about details, it is quickly perceptible through simple observation.
For the Client, the Organizational Culture translates into the efficiency or inefficiency perceived when interacting with the organization; in addition, in what he observes or in what he hears.
The simplest and most meaningful way to perceive Organizational Culture is through interaction with people, but the message transmitted by the infrastructure is also very important and that unquestionably in the eyes of customers or users is part of the landscape that is observed.
This interaction between people and infrastructure is a strategic element that deserves a lot of attention; On the one hand, there are collaborators focused on efficiency, interacting with a simple, uncomfortable or unattractive infrastructure, but who through their skills generate customer satisfaction. At the other extreme, there are inefficient collaborators, interacting with an elegant, comfortable and very attractive infrastructure, but because they are inefficient, they generate a lot of customer dissatisfaction.
And we can add two more scenarios, the idealistic or extremist scenarios; On the one hand, we have efficient collaborators interacting with elegant, comfortable and very attractive infrastructure, which produce a lot of customer satisfaction, and in contrast we have inefficient collaborators who interact with simple, uncomfortable and unattractive infrastructure, which logically generate dissatisfaction in the customers.
It should be noted then that the design of the interaction between people and infrastructure is a strategic element that generates customer satisfaction, as long as the result is efficiency; So people are the key to organizational success; calling them for illustrative purposes "the active element" and the infrastructure "the passive element" within the Organizational Culture.
In conclusion; We can emphasize that the issue is generational, and that in the three perspectives described, family, social and business, there is a clear substitution of new practices over old ones, where without going into analyzing whether they are good or bad, they undoubtedly tend to substitute one by another, because depending on the time, keeping them alive takes a lot of effort and you won't always be able to swim against the current.
Under this reasoning, all cultures become history; and some with more resistance than others we will have to adapt and accept that generationally late or early we will be obsolete, although not for that reason incompetent or unnecessary, so we should not limit ourselves simply to being history, our challenge is to make history, through processes of reasoning and strategic thinking that guarantee us more than subsistence, transcendence.
Considering these three perspectives; Family, Social or Business, it is important to highlight that we are the consequence of a culture, that we are part of it or that we are the ones who are forming or transforming it; We are not alien to the cultural schemes to which we belong, the important thing is to determine whether in that culture we want to be leaders or we are simply followers.
