Adaption to Organizational Culture

As I’ve adjusted to my internship, I’ve gotten to learn and acclimate to the company culture and a big part of this is how they operate: their organizational culture. In the beginning of my internship, they teach you a lot of tangible things in the onboarding process such as how to use the programs they use, how to get all of your tech set up, where to find things, etc. however, no one teaches you about the operational culture: this is something you observe and adjust to as you go. Before my internship, I didn’t know what to expect- was my team going to be super formal with each other or casual? Do they seem like they are friends outside of the office? How often are they communicating with each other? 

I prepared for a formal setting and relationships that were strictly business, however, I was pleasantly surprised as my team is casual yet professional with each other and knows when it’s time to work and get down to business but also when it’s time to have funny conversations. As my internship is remote, I was afraid this would be harder to crack because of the awkward nature of being remote, however while I do think that has put a damper on making more personal relationships faster, it was not as big of an obstacle as I thought. 

Every Monday, to kick off the week we have a team meeting via Zoom which consists of around 10 people and we start the meeting off by talking about how our weekends were for about 5 minutes. We then get down to business and run each other through what we are individually working on for that week so that we are aware of what everyone is doing and what is going on even if we are not directly working on it. Also, our team leader will touch upon bigger ideas or projects that the entire team needs to be thinking of and always ends the meetings by highlighting how important it is to be using the Microsoft Teams chat to keep everyone in the loop and making sure we are updating each other on what is being done. After this meeting, we all go our separate ways and work on our individual projects. Throughout the week, we will ping each other individually on Microsoft Teams to ask each other questions, get opinions, and collaborate. If I am working on a project with a group of people, I will have a separate group chat with them to collaborate, however the team as a whole will use the big chat to keep everyone on the same page. Microsoft Teams is the main form of communication as it allows for quick, fluid, easy communication throughout the workday and this contributes to the informal feel, rather than formally emailing each other every time we have to communicate. Once the work day is over and everyone is off in their personal lives spending their nights as they will, occasionally the team chat will pop up with a funny GIF or someone will share something funny that happened. I enjoy this as it makes me feel like we are more than just a work team but also people with normal, everyday lives. On Friday’s, we will come together as a group again via Zoom to go over how the week went, what got done, and what lies in store for next week. This is typically a shorter meeting as Friday’s as a whole are far more casual, and we end the meeting with talking about what our weekend plans are. 

If I had to put the general norms and expectations of the organizational culture of my team into a phrase it would be “just get the job done”. I have found that for many of my projects, there is no rigid schedule describing how to complete it, it is more a nature of planning how you are going to get it done on your own terms independently: just get it done on time. This might mean the structured hours of work are 9-5 but if you have a project that you need to spend more time on, you keep working until it is done. It took me some time to adjust to the norms and expectations of my teams, especially in terms of communication. I struggled to figure out what level of communication is appropriate with my team members and the person I report to because it is important to find a balance between updating her on what I am doing but also not reporting every little detail she does not need to know/have time to hear. The nature of working remotely also ties into this dynamic as the constant pinging via Microsoft Teams can be annoying to some people. Because of this uncertainty I asked my teammate how my level of communication was and offered an alternative option to keep what I had to show them all in one, however he told me he liked the individual ping method even though I thought it could have been annoying. This highlights the importance of establishing effective communication and how everyone is different in their preferences. While my team works very hard on their projects and getting things done, there is also a very good balance between work-life and personal life that I enjoy and respect. My team works hard during work hours and whatever time they need to get their projects done, but they also enjoy their personal lives after work. Overall, I really enjoy the organizational culture of my team and the less formal yet hard working environment as I believe this allows for effective productivity.