Teamwork makes the Dream Work
The organizational culture at KCIC (my internship site) is informal and friendly. The entire company is built on a foundation of four core values: Collaboration, Persistence, Passion for Learning, and Flexibility. Of the four of them, partnership and collaboration seems to be the most important. Partnership is exemplified through long-term relationships with clients, rapport among employees, and conversations covered in training sessions. For example, yesterday, I had an hour-long meeting on what makes members of a consulting company successful based on 7 core competencies. The key takeaway was that it is important to form genuine relationships with the people you work with. Why? Because this is the basis of establishing trust, which ultimately is what allows you to influence others.
As I said, the culture is informal. KCIC is able to enjoy the positive work environment because of the expectation that everyone is open to collaboration and partnership. The office is laid-back, yet professional. KCIC is able to operate smoothly due to the positive social environment and collaborative expectation.
As far as my internship experience goes, I feel extremely welcome already. KCIC’s values ensure a comfortable environment where anybody, including me, is ready to work with others efficiently, ask questions, address any current or potential issues, as well as suggest ideas for improvement. Communication among employees is strongly encouraged, as it is necessary to ensure that everyone is moving as one unit towards our goal, and working as efficiently as possible. I mean, if people were confused and never spoke up or reached out for help, then they would be wasting time trying to figure out something that someone might have the answer to.
I believe that KCIC’s weakness is partially due to the relaxed culture. I would probably take the laid-back attitude over anything else, but I do notice that many meetings run over time and I am often scrambling to eat my lunch in a shortened amount of time because a meeting ran late. I think that sticking to a schedule is something that could be improved, at least for internal office functions. Either that, or I just need to get used to this culture a bit more. That being said, I do believe that many of KCIC’s strengths lie in their emphasis on the core values I mentioned earlier. Being at the office for one week, it is evident that every employee does their job with these values in mind, consistently exemplifying collaboration, learning, persistence, and flexibility. It is obvious to me that nearly every employee at KCIC believes in the same core values. I happen to also align with these values, which has helped me feel more confident about working at KCIC this summer.
Sounds like an engaging environment, though one that can be challenging given the tendency for things to run long. I’ll be interested to hear, the longer you are there, whether the values that drive the organizational culture and work are somewhat requisite because of the nature of the industry (consulting) or if it has more to do with the leaders of the organization and the culture they wanted to cultivate. I’ll also be interested to learn about if/how communication and the tendency for things to be off-schedule hold true when working with clients or are just a reality when working internally. (I’m hoping it is just the reality internally.) Nice to hear that they have stated values, that they work to make certain that individuals know, understand, and embrace them, and that those drive the environment and the work.