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Organizational Culture Inventory

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Organizational Culture Inventory forSprint Nextel |

Date Survey Taken: 7/23/2010

OCI Style | Your
Raw Score | Your
Percentile Score | Typical Ideal
Percentile Score* | 1. Humanistic-Encouraging | 45 | 89% | 85% | 2. Affiliative | 50 | 99% | 71% | 3. Approval | 35 | 85% | 27% | 4. Conventional | 34 | 79% | 18% | 5. Dependent | 36 | 80% | 24% | 6. Avoidance | 26 | 79% | 27% | 7. Oppositional | 24 | 63% | 45% | 8. Power | 28 | 68% | 30% | 9. Competitive | 29 | 79% | 42% | 10. Perfectionistic | 41 | 94% | 25% | 11. Achievement | 45 | 91% | 78% | 12. Self-Actualizing | 43 | 93% | 82% |
* The typical ideal percentile scores are based on the average scores of 10 members randomly selected from each of 56 different organizations. The 560 respondents in this sample completed the OCI-Ideal, answering in terms of how people should be expected to behave to maximize the effectiveness of their organization.

In 1899 Cleyson L. Brown organizes the Brown Telephone Company in Abilene, Kansas. This company's evolution over the next century creates the industry leader and global innovator known as Sprint. Brown Telephone Company successfully went toe-to-toe with the Bell monopoly in Abilene, Kansas. By the mid-1970s, the company's aggressive growth strategies had firmly established it as the nation's largest independent local telephone provider, which is still true today. Another successful company was found in 1987 called Fleet Net, renamed Nextel in 1993. It was found by entrepreneur named Morgan O’Brien. The company rapidly established itself as a nationwide force in the expanding world of wireless communications. In 2004 Sprint Nextel merger was announced. They have combined two great traditions into a single company with an extraordinary record of achievement. With pride in their bold and entrepreneurial heritage, they will continue to open new doors for their customers and their industry. Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel served more than 48 million customers at the end of the first quarter of 2010 and is widely recognized for developing engineering and deploying innovative technologies. Sprint Nextel offers a range of programs to build new skills, improve on existing ones, and to create a company of individuals working together toward a common goal. Sprint Nextel employee resource groups are a crucial component of their overall inclusion strategy. They are group of employees who come together to support common goals and interests, which are aligned with their company vision and values. All resource groups promote inclusion, open dialogue, learning, and constructive contribution.

According to the results obtained from the OCI, the primary style for Sprint Nextel is the Affiliative Style. Sprint Nextel increases the service performance by supporting open communication, good collaboration, and effective coordination of activities. All employees are dedicated to their work groups and feel they fit in comfortably. Sprint Nextel encourages integrity and loyalty in communications and actions. The secondary style for Sprint Nextel is the Perfectionistic style. Sprint Nextel values perfectionism and determination. They strive as much as possible to avoid mistakes, keep track of everything, and work long hours to accomplish narrowly defined objectives. Teamwork is a critical element in meeting goals, particularly because many issues and functions are so complex that no one individual has all the answers, therefore, a team-focused approach is convincingly the only way to generate intended results. Sales representatives at Sprint Nextel are involved in assisting other team members with sales techniques and strategies, including consultative selling, overcoming objections, competitive positioning, and relationship building. Sprint Nextel operates in a true team-driven environment, as the company ranks each location based on sales results, thus the performance of each representative affects the entire location. Therefore, coordination and open communication is increasingly important to Sprint Nextel effectiveness. At Sprint Nextel employees are motivated with friendliness. They give recognition to employees in handling their jobs and specific situations. When any employee does a good job, they immediately appreciate him/her in front of other people. This will result in motivating not only that employee but others as well. Sprint Nextel is considered a service organization, and in any service delivery, there are going to be problems between employees and the customer. Sprint Nextel employees are expected to resolve such conflicts with tactfulness. Their focus is to satisfy the customer and, as such, they should try to classify the problem, evaluate it, and then resolve it in the most practical way. But at the same time being tactful does not mean that they have to give in to the customer all the time. What it does mean that they act in composed, professional manner and communicate to the customer in a way that is not aggressive or humiliating. Otherwise, it will contradict with the culture and structure of the organization. One of the weakest styles of Sprint Nextel culture is the oppositional style. Sprint Nextel does not gain status and influence by being critical. Ideas have to be opposed without pointing out flaws. Otherwise, a negative work environment will increase customer service complaints, low quality of work, high turnover, and lack of creativity and innovation. Sprint Nextel culture adopts the initiative of pointing out what is liked about the idea, what might be changed, and what can be learned or done to improve it. The avoidance culture of Sprint Nextel is also considered one of the weakest styles. Sprint Nextel never promotes fear; there is no need for self-protection and a tendency to withdraw from threatening situations. Supporting this style will induce employees to stay away from group activities and conversations and react to situations in an uncertain and unrevealing way. Much weaker style than the avoidance is the power style. Sprint Nextel is classified as a participative organization not structured on the basis of the authority inherent associated with positions. Sprint Nextel creates the proper conditions in the organization so that sharing the power actually works. They recognize extremely well, giving up control is a defined activity when they do it appropriately; they make it possible to get more completed while reducing the risk of employees not doing their part. Sprint Nextel widens responsibility outward to employees so that leaders do not become the final destination on everything the employees try to do. Never relinquish control is not promoted by Sprint Nextel culture. TARGETS FOR CULTURAL CHANGE GRID OCI Norms | Ideal Score | Your Current Score | Gap* | CONSTRUCTIVE
Achievement | 78% | 91% | 0 | Self Actualizing | 82% | 93% | 0 | Humanistic | 85% | 89% | 0 | Affiliative | 71% | 99% | 0 | | | | | PASSIVE DEFENSIVE
Approval | 27% | 85% | 58% | Conventional | 18% | 79% | 61% | Dependent | 24% | 80% | 56% | Avoidance | 27% | 79% | 52% | | | | | AGGRESSIVE DEFENSIVE
Oppositional | 45% | 63% | 18% | Power | 30% | 68% | 38% | Competitive | 42% | 79% | 37% | Perfectionistic | 25% | 94% | 69% |

The greatest gap difference between Sprint Nextel score and the ideal score is the Perfectionistic Style. Sprint Nextel needs to decrease emphasis on being perfectionistic. Perfectionistic cultural norms may lead employees to strive to accomplish goals and standards that are unrealistic, unnecessarily difficult, and potentially irrelevant. A high level of perfectionism is not always healthy recreation of excellence. When Sprint Nextel places unrealistic pressure on employees, they are more likely to place that same pressure on others. Also every piece of work is given the same importance whether it is a major project or a simple email response. If employees fear laugh at and failure, they are likely to spend more time and energy than is necessary on individual or group tasks. This is not a call for accepting poor work. On the contrary, employees should constantly look for process improvement. All the while, they must be attentive. The creatures in charge of the service presented by Sprint Nextel are humans. Mistakes happen. Expecting perfection in the way humans communicate to one another is parallel to expecting every customer comes to Sprint Nextel will enroll in the service. It is unrealistic. The second greatest gap between Sprint Nextel and the ideal score is the Conventional Style. This indicates that Sprint Nextel practices a culture that is conservative and traditional. Employees are expected to conform, follow the rules, and make a good impression. However, being too conventional can interfere with the effectiveness by suppressing innovation and preventing Sprint Nextel from adapting to changes in its environment. Adding to this, an emphasize on following procedures and traditions regardless of their relevance, appropriateness, or effectiveness may help to ensure standardization, reliability, and consistency; Nevertheless, it prevents employees from identifying new and better ways of doing things, taking risks, and assuming responsibility for their actions.
Sprint Nextel must try to change its current culture to be more consistent with its ideal; the internal systems, practices, and structures at all organizational levels need to be reliable in emphasizing expectations for less Defensive and styles. The OCI discovered moderate to weak levels of Aggressive/Defensive behaviors in Sprint Nextel culture. No doubt that the value of perfectionism is obvious for Sprint Nextel, but an over emphasis can lead them to lose sight of goals, get lost in details and develop symptoms of stress. In Addition to this, being oppositional increases the chances of confrontations. While questioning is important to Sprint Nextel, a highly oppositional culture can lead to poor group problem solving and diminished solutions to problems. Consequently, if Sprint Nextel wants to reduce potentials for Aggressive/Defensive behaviors, possible changes may be found in: adjustment of the reward and penalty systems and practices, opportunity for training and the distribution of resources. These changes will definitely encourage employees to work efficiently and effectively. And it will enhance the quality of service offered by Sprint Nextel.
It seems to be that Sprint Nextel culture is more intense in the constructive cluster. This indicates that they encourage employees to interact with one another and approach tasks in ways that will assist them to meet their higher order satisfaction needs. In addition to this they promote respect, communicate and reinforce the service mission and values, and involve employees in plans to improve the service. The Passive/Defensive norms are elevated to some extend. Employees must not feel stressed to think and behave in ways that are incompatible with way they personally believe they should behave in order to be effective. Avoiding such practices will result in high levels of motivation and satisfaction. Employees, who have been working at Sprint Nextel for very long, have engaged in a set of norms and expectations. They might resist change at the beginning, but they will comply later on. This is because Sprint Nextel culture is not characterized by high levels of oppositional norms.
Now I know that the OCI is a very important tool that can be used to motivate, guide, and monitor change. It also demonstrates how the casual factors in the model can be used to change culture and the quality of customer service. And that cultural information is significant to managing any organization effectively. Culture adds meaning to organizational existence further than the actual representation, rule or words while contributing to the bottom line. Cultural changes are needed sometimes to support all organizational change efforts. Otherwise, organizational change efforts will be unsuccessful if organizational culture remains basically the same. Changes in procedures remain shallow and short lived unless there are primary changes in the values, ways of thinking, and approaches to problem solving. The opposing forces will mainly renew their efforts to bring back the old status. The ability of Sprint Nextel to be culturally innovative is related to leadership and top management must be responsible for building strong culture. Leaders must construct the social reality of Sprint Nextel; they need to shape values and attend to the performance and vision of the organization.

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...Stringer 10/16/14 Executive Summary The following case anlaysis has been conducted on the Harvard Business Review’s Leading Change at Simmons article. The analysis intends to present the situation at Simmons during 2001 and some key management decisions to consider that would positively decide the organization’s fate. There are several challenges facing Simmons, both within and beyond the organization’s control, that will require a visionary to help navigate them to success. This paper takes the position that the newly appointed CEO of Simmons, Charlie Eitel, can convince the shareholders to invest in culture change for Simmons and positively build the organization’s value. In an effort to provide objective analysis and empirically based recommendations, the analysis has followed a methodology that presents some important organizational theoreis pertaining to the situation with Simmons, as well as insight into goals, risk, and capabilities. Following that analysis will be a set of reommendations for how to implement the goals into plans that could achieve the desired results, namely convincing the investors to allow Eitel to roll out the costly Great Game Of Life program and rebuild the company from its core. Case Overview Simmons is currently one of the top mattress firms in the U.S. and has been repeatedly recognized as one of Forbes 100 top places to work. Throughout the company’s long history, it has undergone change of various magnitudes in response...

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