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Clear Strategy Builds a Better Culture

CMMA Blog

World-renowned management consultant Peter Drucker once said: “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” And former CEO of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kallaher summed up the importance of company culture with: “Competitors can buy tangible assets, but they can’t buy culture.” Having a good culture in place is just as important as a good strategy – you can have a great strategy, but if your culture is not up to scratch your businesses will face troubles.

But what exactly is culture? I am not going to tell you what your culture should be, but I can suggest how you can best define it by the following four cultural pillars. A strong corporate culture must be Shared, Pervasive, Endurable, and Implicit.

First of all, culture must be shared – it has to be a group mentality, a phenomenon. It must also be pervasive. If it isn’t something that employees, clients and prospects can quickly adopt, it’s not pervasive. People are drawn to organizations with characteristics similar to their own, so your culture must also be endurable. And, your company culture must be implicit. Think of it as a type of silent language that everyone speaks. More than simply attracting the best talent and enjoying time with colleagues, a good culture lays the foundation for businesses and workers to adapt their mindsets. This results in more productive and successful employees with better attitudes.

I’ve long subscribed to the idea that there are eight very distinct cultural styles that an organization can follow. While companies can be a blend of cultures, most tend to orientate towards one distinct style. Despite their differences, the one thing that remains the same with each style is that culture is most strong when leaders are the main driving force behind them all. In a study by Harvard Business Review, business leaders were asked to rank the following culture styles from one to eight for their individual organizations:

1. Caring

This is where employees are united by loyalty. Culture-focused leaders emphasize sincerity, teamwork and positive relationships. With this style, the focus is on mutual trust. This is also one of the most prevalent styles, with 63% of organizations ranking themselves as falling into this category first.

2. Purpose

Employees are united by a focus on global communities. Leaders who promote this style of culture encourage shared ideas and the contribution to a greater cause. The same study found that only 9% of businesses class themselves as emphasizing purpose over any other style.

3. Learning

Curiosity unites employees. Leaders who emphasize innovation, knowledge and adventure are rare, with only 7% of companies considering themselves a learning-focused culture above the other styles.

4. Enjoyment

Just 2% of companies have a culture of enjoyment as their strongest characteristic. This type of organisation is led through fun and excitement. Employees are united by playfulness and stimulation, and leaders support spontaneity and a sense of humour.

5. Results

Unsurprisingly, a results-focused culture, which is founded on achievement and winning, was ranked the highest in the HBR study. Over three-quarters (89%) considered their company to fall into this category over any other. Employees are united by a drive for success and leaders give emphasis to goal accomplishment.

6. Authority

This cultural style is defined by strength, decisiveness and boldness and 4% of leaders rank this style highest. Leaders focus on confidence and dominance with employees being united by strong control.

7. Safety

A tendency and fondness to plan and prepare is key to this culture, with 8% of companies ranking their company culture in the safety bracket first. Employees are united by a desire to feel protected and anticipate change; leaders emphasize being realistic and planning ahead.

8. Order

15% of organizational cultures can be classified as having order-focused cultures at their core. These companies are founded on respect and structure. Employees are united by cooperation and leaders support shared procedures and time-honoured customs.

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While a culture usually develops organically and intuitively, company leaders can aspire to strengthen certain attributes and moderate others. This is something I work on every day with my team. With so much of this culture – both positive and negative – coming from above, leaders must ask themselves “what culture do I want for my company?”

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Michael Smolens to Give Keynote at iEARN July 17

CMMA Blog

Keynote Address to iEARN Annual Conference, Marrakesh Morocco – July 17, 2017

YES, IT’S POSSIBLE!

iEARN has 50,000 teachers in 140 countries – with over 1,000 languages and dialects spoken amongst all its countries.

Nelson Mandela said, “When you speak to a man in a language he understands, you speak to his head.  When you speak to him in his native language, you speak to his heart.”

There is an explosion in the creation of all types of knowledge for all purposes – education, training, spirituality, entertainment, religion, marketing, corporate communications, news, etc., a very high percentage of which is in English, or just a few other major languages – most of it is not available in the native languages of over 6 billion people.

There is, at the same time, an exponential increase in the amount of this knowledge being made available in video, which is becoming the dominant way to communicate, tell stories and inspire.

Dotsub, my 9th startup 10 years ago, has a mission to enable all knowledge, of any type, in video format, to be available to all 7.3 billion people in the world in their native language, in all formats necessary including all digital devices including smartphones AND feature phones.

This talk will give three examples of global programs in which Dotsub is involved, which iEARN teachers and students, if they wish, can participate in to help expand global knowledge in music, mathematics and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their native languages. They will be learning new ideas and participating in a global movement, which can in its own way, help increase cross cultural communication and understanding, and a little bit at a time – change the world for the better with the global spread of knowledge.

YES, IT’S POSSIBLE!

  1. Dotsub was asked to partner with a company in the music industry them to do a pilot with the lyrics of 50,000 songs, from primarily English, into a minimum of 15 languages, all done by a global network of volunteer translators – on Dotsub’s platform managed by Dotsub.  This pilot will involve over 2,000,000 Audio Language Minutes (ALMs) which will require about 250 man years to complete by volunteers.

Nothing of this magnitude has ever before been done, as until now, almost all of the billions of lyrics and lyric translations available on the web are illegal, with no rights obtained and no revenue being generated for the music publishers, songwriters or artists.

Since music and songs are a basic global method of storytelling, sharing emotions, and building deep connections between fans of the same artist/song and hundreds of millions of people in all countries of the world sing songs in English, but DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THE WORDS MEAN.  We have already begun to create a network in India who will be finally, after years of singing lyrics they do not understand with music they love, be able to understand what they are singing.

This is an opportunity for iEARN, to create a program that works for the teachers, to allow those students in any country, speaking any language, to become very early participants in this program.  How the students will be recognized, rewarded, involved is totally up to iEARN, as I have obtained early approval of this exciting project for all its students.

YES, IT’S POSSIBLE!

  1. Global Math Week – 10/10/17 – https://www.theglobalmathproject.org/ – join one million students, teachers, math leaders and adults from around the globe in an astounding mathematical experience. “See mathematics like you’ve never seen it before.”

We are working with James Tanton, founder of the Global Math Project, to enable the entire iEARN community, again if it wishes, on its own terms, to integrate the years of work and thinking of The Global Math Project into individual school/teacher curriculums, while at the same time creating the opportunity to do something on a much bigger global scale with iEARN to become a partner – https://www.theglobalmathproject.org/partners

The Project is focused on the base 10 system of current mathematics – as most   arithmetic and mathematics works on the base 10 system of numbers.  That is why the Global Math Week is on October 10th – the calendar date 10/10/17. Again, this is a totally global opportunity to have iEARN teachers, on their own or in groups, work with a cutting edge global effort, across languages and cultures, to help make math learning fun and collaborative. Teachers or country leaders can become ambassadors – all is possible.

Since Global Math Week is less than 3 months from the iEARN Annual Meeting, time is of the essence to get started with this project for this year, but it will be an annual event.

YES, IT’S POSSIBLE!

  1. SDGs Without Borders – creating a comprehensive global language platform to enable all media, studies, comments, news, or anything else, about the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be translated into all the world’s languages using Dotsub platform and volunteer translators. iEARN has been actively involved in studying and including into parts of local curriculums and classes – all determined either at the country or teacher level – with different classes, thoughts, etc.

Dotsub has registered the URL – https://www.SDGsWithoutBorders.com – and is in the very early stages of lining up partners, media companies, NGOs, senior management, funding, etc. to enable the exploding amount of knowledge, comments, media, videos, TV/radio/etc created in any language to be able to be consumed in hopefully hundreds of languages. This will enable all 7.3 billion people in the world, who in total speak 6,800 languages – 85% of which are oral only, to understand what is said and written about each of the SDGs.  The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon created the 17 SDGs starting Jan 1, 2016 –  Dec 31, 2030, following the 15-year program created by the previous UN leader Kofi Annan called MDGs, Millennium Development Goals.

Since iEARN has already embraced the SDGs as a part of their global curriculum, and iEARN countries speak over 1,000 languages and dialects,  active involvement in the program to help SDG related knowledge be available  for all 7.3B people could be a major, long term program for iEARN to embrace,  again in any way it feels, fits into its existing and future agenda.

The above summarizes my thinking into making available to all iEARN teachers and students 3 different global programs – in music/songs, Math, and the SDGs, which will involve cutting edge technology, language, translation, volunteering, learning and huge potential global impact.  That is why I have titled my talk YES – IT’S POSSIBLE.

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Cardiff City Football Club Partners with Dotsub

CMMA Blog

Bluebirds partner with Dotsub to benefit local and global fanbase.

Cardiff – 16 April 2018

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As part of the Club’s award-winning fan engagement and international development programmes, Cardiff City FC has partnered with the video captioning platform, Dotsub.

In addition to social media engagement and accessibility benefits, the Club uses subtitles to localise video content in Mandarin for the emerging Chinese football market and UK-based Mandarin-speaking supporters.

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Cardiff City FC Executive Director & CEO, Ken Choo, says of the partnership with Dotsub: “Adapting and catering to our fans’ needs will always be at the heart of what we do at Cardiff City, “Not only does our partnership with Dotsub allow us multi-lingual communication with our supporters, but it also improves the accessibility of our video content for the deaf and hard of hearing.

“This is another fine example of our ever-developing fan engagement and international development strategies here at Cardiff City FC.”

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Ben Dobson, Dotsub’s Head of Sports Partnerships, said: “The ways in which football fans, particularly millennials, engage with their team is increasingly driven by video across social media.

“The majority of these fans will consume video content on-the-go, with the volume muted, on their mobile device. So, by adding subtitles, the club have taken a timely step to boost their global fan engagement.

“Everyone at Dotsub is delighted to partner with Cardiff City FC. We’re fortunate to count the likes of the NFL and NHL amongst our clients so it’s great to see Cardiff City join this elite group of sporting brands and entities that are leading the way with their fan engagement.”

Editorial notes:

  • Cardiff City FC has recently been nominated for Best Matchday Experience at the 2018 Sport Business Awards in London. This is the club’s second consecutive SBA nomination and comes on the back of another three national and European fan engagement or matchday experience awards in the past two years.
  • Founded in New York, Dotsub is a video captioning platform that allows subtitles to published in any language to boost video engagement and improve accessibility. For more information, visit dotsub.com

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