Challenge

I am a student who is doing Masters in Psychology with Human Resource

specialization. I would like to discuss that was carried as a part of my assignment where mind

mapping was used as a tool for analyzing culture. The company was a media house based in

Gurgaon, India. The company caters to services like social media marketing, media planning

and buying, public relations, web design and development, content marketing, analytics etc.

The organization is customer focused and values them with atmost care and value. The

organization belies in family oriented culture and the members here are encouraged to be

innovating. The challenge proposed was to find the gap in culture that is in the vision,

mission or core values and is practiced. It was important to look into all their practices and

compare it with their proposed values.

Selection

It was identified that there exists a gap between what the organisations expected and

what actually the organization was practicing. Though the organization had healthy practices

it did not align with their vision, mission completely. We as a team we made a mind

mapping/ cognitive mapping tool which was designed to fix the gap. At the same time, there

were attrition problems that were identified.  Late analyzing the culture, a strategic training

module was developed for mid level management.

Application

To have a reality check, we had a member who had interned in the organization, so it

was easier for us to get first hand information regarding policies, values, artifacts, structure,

communication etc. Further we also looked up information on types of culture that exists. We

realized that the organization fits in to clan and adhocracy culture. Later we listed the factors

and concepts that is seen in these two topics. After analyzing the leadership in the

organization it was noticed that there needed a change in the way it functioned. We analysed

what type of leadership would be suit the culture. We desined the training module to train the

mid level managers, that could reduce attrition. Considering the clan and adhocracy culture,

we realized that fostering people oriented leadership made more sense.

Insight

It was observed that, though the organization expected clan culture in records but the

practice was different. Through a deeper psychological analysis of the culture of the

organisation, it was found that there existed gaps between the proposed values of clan culture

and the actual implementation of those values. For example, they say that they value

commitment among employees, and yet are unable to instil a sense of belonging among

employees. On the other hand, there was an excessive focus on task orientation There are

various models of leadership styles that have been propounded by scholars over time.

However, all the leadership styles fall into the broad category of either, people-oriented or

task-oriented.

Approach

Mind mapping is can be useful tool for analysis but sometimes may not be the right

tool. We might have to try out different ones, that can best suit the problem. Organisation

these days are dominated with millennials and GenZ and expect flexibility in process and

communication. May be story telling can be a tool where it gives space for members to be

participative and involved.

