Cracks In A Business’ Foundation
It’s easy, sometimes, for leaders to sit back, look at their smiling employees, pat themselves on the back, and assume everything in the organization is solid and growing stronger with each and every “Good morning!” Or “Hey, how was your weekend, big guy?”
The fact is, there might be cracks in the foundation that could crumble and collapse the whole operation at any moment.
Most foundational problems have very little to do with production or quality control or even customer service. Those are the out-in-the-open issues that can be handled and addressed with window dressing (not that production, quality control, and customer service aren’t important, but you’ll see what I mean in just a minute).
It’s not about marketing or sales tactics, either. It’s about culture.
Culture, culture, culture.
And if you have a business problem (any problem, really); you, my friend, have a culture problem. Breakdown in communication? Culture problem. Are people showing up late for work or calling in sick on a regular basis? Culture problem. Lack of role clarity? Culture. Employees aren’t stepping up and owning problems, mistakes, and weaknesses, or offering strategies, solutions, or strengths? Culture. Culture. Culture.
A lot of organizations treat their cultural problems as individual-performance issues, but that’s a forest for the trees scenario. They don’t understand healthy cultures, so they move people around, hire, fire, relocate, give up, or worse… rewrite their mission statements. Ugh.
Over the next five days, we will be addressing various signs that you might have a culture problem. Follow along. Share your thoughts. Share your secrets. And let us know what other signs might help folks sniff out a culture problem in their organization.
Leaders Ready!
Apathy Ruins Business Culture
APATHY. Are you seeing a drop in engagement and productivity or a lack of “Attaboys” and “Attagirls” from employees and co-workers? That’s a problem!
When success is defined and managed at the top, and then held over people like a dangled carrot or an anvil, there’s no buy-in and ownership of the process or the outcome. And what’s worse, the people actually doing all of the work don’t get to help set their own goals or determine best practices for themselves. Apathy is the opposite of progress, apathy ruins business culture. If I can’t own my role, why should I care?
Wildsparq has created a Culture Benchmark that we would love to share with you and your organization. Contact us for more information, or email info@wildsparq.com, and we’ll have someone fill you in on the details.