Impacting Learning Through Adaptive Leadership Siemens Corporation is a multinational electronics and industrial engineering firm that focuses in the areas of industry, energy, and healthcare. Our company provides data storage for Siemens and I went to undergrad with one of its employees, Sasha Patel. In this paper, two employees of the Siemens IT department were interviewed to evaluate their perception of Siemens’s loyalty to its values in both communication and practice. As the interview responses indicate, while Siemens holds a strong commitment to leading in innovation, it must continually upgrade its communications approach to spread its vision and mission to all employees of the organization. In order to determine whether Siemens communicates its mission and values effectively through all levels of the organization, both a leader and subordinate were interviewed. The first interviewee of the Siemens Healthcare IT division was George Stephen, an IT manager who has worked for Siemens Corporation for three years. The first series of interview questions considered how the mission and vision statements of the organization were communicated within the organization. As Stephen noted, “all employees are provided with an overview of the company history and values during their orientation. Management is considered to set its goals by considering how those goals are aligned with company values. When a team of consultants is dispatched to meet with representatives from healthcare organizations, the company encourages them to determine how the implemented technology will improve efficiencies for the organization and serve the underlying mission of the company.” (G. Stephen, personal communication, June 16, 2014). Stephen also describes how the company communicates its values to stakeholders outside of the company. As he expresses, the company is more effective in communicating its values externally than internally. He says that the company uses marketing and related divisions to highlight its commitment to innovation to consumers. Also, it selects suppliers that emphasize efficiency as a core component of their services. Stephen believes that the organizational structure makes it easier to communicate with individuals outside of the organization than within the organization. Because the business units are larger and there are many employees working from remote locations, it can be difficult to communicate with employees from across the organization. Working remotely at my company, I can see how this can happen. Stephen recognizes that stakeholders are more likely to receive consistent communication from the organization than employees. Sasha Patel is an old friend of mine from college, and is now an IT Analyst for the Siemens Healthcare IT division. Patel expressed, “I believe that the mission and vision of the corporation are poorly communicated.” (S. Patel, personal communication, June 14, 2014). She states that while she read information on the vision of the company in the new employee manual, she is rarely asked to focus on those values during her day-to-day tasks. Patel says that in addition to data analysis and network design, her job entails many routine tasks such as data entry, systems maintenance, and answering inquiries from outside departments. She expressed that she is rarely involved in decision-making and often loses sight of “the big picture” when she is working. She also mentioned that the company is more focused on her productivity than metrics that would indicate innovation. As a result, she holds the belief that the organization is ineffective in communicating its vision and mission to individuals outside of the organization. While Patel does not communicate with members outside of the organization, she holds an opinion regarding the effectiveness of the organization in communicating to external stakeholders. Patel argues that as a prospective employee, the organization placed a moderate emphasis on expressing its commitment to ethics and innovation. Rather, the company expressed a greater emphasis on her technical competency and her educational credentials. She believes that while the organization might express its values to sales prospects and the public for the purposes of public relations, it fails to emphasize these values externally unless there is a specific objective behind the communication of values. Management and entry/mid-level employees can hold different perspectives on the manner in which an organization communicates its values. As Stephen demonstrated, managers might have a stronger connection to organizational values while functional employees might only be focused on the tasks related to their positions. Because Stephen has a stronger involvement in strategic planning, he also must consider factors such as the company’s mission and values in performing the core tasks of his job. Since Patel is removed from decision-making processes that impact the company at an organizational level, she spends less time considering the overall goals of the organization. The interview also showed that management could overestimate the impact that values training has on an entry level employee in an organization. In order to effectively communicate a company’s mission and values, managers should not simply rely on orientation to pass on company values or just have them posted on their website. These values should be communicated often throughout the duration of an employee’s time with the company, during quarterly meetings and town halls. While it might not be practical for every employee in a large organization to be directly involved in strategic planning, entry level employees should understand how their jobs relate to the broader goals of the company. I can relate to Patel’s feedback, as I am in a similar position at my company. The feedback from Stephen and Patel prove that organizations must make a proactive effort to involve employees at all levels in decision-making activities that emphasize broader organizational objectives, not just senior management. References
Company profiles. (2014). Siemens. Retrieved from http://usa.healthcare.siemens.com/infrastructure-it/healthcare-it/about-health-services/company-profile-hs/.