The Iceberg Model
The Iceberg Model of culture & leadership can drive organizational success. The fundamental pillars are Strategy, leadership, and culture that define the success of any organization. Organizational culture should align with the growth strategy defined by the leadership to achieve the desired business outcome. And the leadership should uphold organizational values and beliefs through their daily activities and decisions that aids the execution of the organizational strategy.
What is Iceberg Theory:
Edward T Hall developed the "Iceberg Model of Culture” In 1976, where he explains that organizational culture is like an iceberg found in polar seas, around 10% of the iceberg is visible above the water surface, while most of the iceberg is hidden and below the water surface. Similar approach is applied to every organizational Culture that has the characteristic of being highly disproportionate in its actual visibility.
Image credit to Internet Source: pdfproof.com
Surface Culture:
These are some common observation formed by people based on what they see, hear, or feel and easily visible from the outside, about organizational culture and leadership. We often called the “surface culture,” for example, vision, strategy, goals workplace ambiance, dress code, systems, policies, processes, etc., are visible on the surface.
Deeper Culture:
The aspects of a deeper culture are built on beliefs and values, bias and coercion, authority and competition, health and wellbeing and these factors cannot be easily perceived or evaluated as external factors. These elements are very crucial for the organization that can make or break the organization and very difficult to handle. The organizational leadership has a significant impact on changing the culture and disseminating the deeper culture through their proper actions, decisions, beliefs, and behavior.
Organizational Culture:
The Organization DNA is sometimes used as a shorthand for an organizations culture and strategy. Organizations DNA is the organization’s “smells” and behaves with visible and invisible elements. Organizational culture is a set of beliefs and values that drive what people do and how they do it. Culture is implicit norm that identifies the type of employee’s behavior that are accepted, rejected, encouraged, or discouraged within the entire organization. Culture influences in decision making, behavior and the motivation of employees, hence individual and company performance.
Iceberg of Ignorance theory by Sidney Yoshida:
Iceberg of ignorance trigger employees’ disengagement and frustration at the front line and subsequently generates high attrition and poor business performance.
• “The iceberg of ignorance” by Sidney Yoshida, observed that senior level management is often removed from day-to-day business operations. For that reason, they fail to understand about the running systems and processes that affect both employees and customers.
Fig: The iceberg of ignorance” by Sidney Yoshida
• The study concluded in a way that only 4% of the day-to-day problems are aware of executive level, only 9% of the problems were aware of department managers, employee supervisors know of 74% of problems whereas the frontline employees know almost 100% of problems that significantly affects the quality of products or services that were being delivered to customers.
Iceberg Model: Using Motivation to enhance organization performance
There are many factors that determine that employees are motivated or not. To start with from the recruitment and get trained for a particular position that drives employees motivated to do his job perfectly that also triggers the highest performance of the organizations.
Picture credit to 6seconds.org about Iceberg Model of Motivation
To examine an employee’s highest commitment and performance to the organization both Extrinsic and intrinsic motivators are identified. Extrinsic motivators are as “above the surface of the iceberg” such as status, money & perks, praise that engaged employees checking into work, maintains and followed procedures and completing work duties in time. On other side, intrinsic motivators are resided at below the surface of the iceberg where employees are acknowledged, develop relationships, have feelings of belonging, purpose, and resulting in employees maintaining trust, innovation, commitment, and loyalty& satisfaction within the organization.
The challenge persists in engaging employees with intrinsic motivators. Extrinsic motivators are tangible, measurable and always supportive to leadership in the organization. Three Keys to develop Intrinsic Motivation Employee involvement, Build relationships, Work with purpose.
Iceberg Model: Organization Culture Change
Organizational culture is the shadow of the leadership. Leader shape their organization culture through their behaviors. The behavior of the senior team has a direct impact of the performance and productivity of the entire organizations. Therefore, it is important for leadership to address on cultivating a great culture. Once culture developed it is very hard to change. Leaders are working as the change agent to change the organization.
Image credit to TORBEN RICK – Organization culture Change
Organization cannot change itself at their own. Top performance leadership teams could realize that their collective and individual behavior have a positive or negative shadow across the entire organization. The leader should perform the desired behavior as a role model and let others see & follow the desired values in action. The most difficult leadership challenges that faces are the changing the culture of the organization. Because an organization’s culture is consisting of many interlocking set of goals, processes, roles, feelings, values, communications practices, attitudes and assumptions.
At the end, by understanding and practicing the iceberg theory, we can find out the root causes of the problems in the organizations and transform human behavior at a large extend by motivating, training & development. Organizational culture has an enormous impact on employee engagement, performance, productivity, overall experiences and success. Right leadership behavior, belief and actions can play a significant role in influencing culture within the organization and driving the organizational strategies to become successful organization.