Organizational Culture Through the Looking Glass

The book makes and interesting point, that we do not realize our organizational culture until we step outside of it and realize that by acting the way we usually would within our organization that we are deviants from the norm. I am currently experience this “organizational culture shock”. I am currently in Austin, TX for the next two weeks on a business trip for training at one of our partner manufacturing locations. First, I do not have a manufacturing background so the factory is foreign to me and second, Cisco employees have our own little world with our own language and way of doing things. Stepping into a manufacturing organization that is not Cisco has been quite disorienting for me. At Cisco, everyone knows that everyone will be late to a meeting and that many people will have their computers open in that meeting doing something else, which I am not saying is a good way of doing things rather just that this is what is done. Meetings are commonplace and we could easily fill a full eight hours with back to back meetings. In this manufacturing organization that we are visiting they are very strict on time, if you are even one minute late they will lock you out of the meeting and open computers are not allowed in the meeting. The meeting rooms have standing room only at the high-boy tables in order to discourage meeting for too long and too often. Again, I am not suggesting one way is better than another but that they are very different cultures that the people who live it every day are not aware of until confronted with it by being an outsider.