🌿🧭🌳 OD07: Conversation about how UiPath scaled ∙ 8 types of corporate culture ∙ Tweet for Thought ∙ Achieving agility at scale
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1. Conversation about how UiPath scaled
Last week we invited you to join the crowdsourced interview experiment and contribute with questions for Marius Istrate, the former Chief People Officer of UiPath, about specifics behind the growth of the organization from 100 to 3000 employees and from 4 offices to over 50 in less than 3 years.
We invite you to discover the result, in a conversation that touches on culture, strategy, psychological safety, growth & innovation and leading change.
The phrase that says a lot about their hyper-growth journey:
"I believe I have lived through 5 or 6 different versions of UiPath while I was there."
8 types of corporate culture
Based on a comprehensive study that analyzed the culture of more than 230 companies, the leadership styles and values of more than 1300 executives and the survey responses of ±25000 employees, the research team that published the Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture identified 8 types of corporate cultures, as shown below.
According to this framework, the two most important dimensions that help us understand an organizational culture are:
People interactions: from highly independent to highly interdependent
Response to change: from emphasizing stability to emphasizing flexibility
We find this lens useful when looking at organizational cultures and we invite you to discover more details about the 8 types in the reference HBR article below.
Practical ideas
If you are leading an organization, this will help you determine the fit between your individual style and the organizational culture, so that you can maximize your impact.
If you are leading a strategic initiative, the “The Pros and Cons of culture style” section can help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of the existing organizational culture, so that you can find an approach better suited for your organization.
If you are in the process of evolving your organizational culture, this may help you better understand the intended and unintended effects of different cultural styles.
Tweet for Thought
Achieving agility at scale
The SmHarter team has created a thorough analysis about how eight large companies achieved agility at scale and a summary of the lessons to be learned.
As you can see from the comparison below, none of them did this by:
Adhering to 1 Agile framework or by the book
Using any commercial Scaled Agile framework (e.g. SAFe, DAD or LeSS)
Imitating other companies
Using a cookie-cutter approach for how all teams should work
As we’re involved in a couple of agility initiatives at the moment, this definitely resonated with us. That’s why we invite you to discover more by reading this analysis, especially if you’re leading or contributing to such an initiative in your organization.
The OrgDev newsletter is curated by Raluca and Bülent Duagi, the team behind Sense & Change. We work as Organizational Development Advisors, offering elegant guidance for implementing strategic initiatives in client organizations.