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Category Archive: Organizational Culture

How To Define Your Corporate Culture

Posted by on April 16, 2018

Organizational culture is a hot topic because it’s the secret sauce that allows all of your people and process to work together for maximum effectiveness. It is that unique combination of core values, vision, purpose, mission and stories. When it is working well almost no one notices but when it is not everyone knows and it drains the trust out of your teams. This Forbes Council post was very helpful:

“With employee engagement on the decline, your company’s corporate culture may be at risk. You may find that you are losing the loyalty of your team and that the vision you have for your company is in jeopardy. But, what if you are a new organization looking to create a corporate culture from scratch?

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The Two Traits Of The Best Problem Solving Teams

Posted by on April 4, 2018

Team collaboration is one of the most misunderstood concepts within many organizations. The old axiom of the sum is greater than the contribution of the individual parts it not working. Too much feedback from the wrong people and not enough from others creates predictable patterns of frustration. Teams need real leadership or they cannot be successful. This HBR post will help:

“Imagine you are a fly on the wall in a corporate training center where a management team of 12 is participating in a session on executing strategy. The team is midway through attempting to solve a new, uncertain, and complex problem. The facilitators look on as at first the exercise follows its usual path.”

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How To Train Yourself To Take Feedback

Posted by on March 30, 2018

One of the major weaknesses I find through my executive coaching is many leaders avoid or even hate conflict. This inevitably leads to even more conflict because the situation was not dealt with before it escalated into a crisis. The only way to avoid this is effective ongoing feedback. This Fast Company post is excellent:

“But let’s get real: Sometimes the only way to get perspective about what needs to change comes from an outside perspective. Yes, believe it or not, there is often a gap between who we desire and think we are presenting to the world, and the way others see us. Turns out that when you ask the people around you–the ones who see you in action every day and are impacted by the choices you make–where you can grow, their ideas might be a little different than your own.”

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Creating The Right Organizational Culture

Posted by on March 12, 2018

I find myself in working with executives debating whether prioritizing results or activities is the best approach to building a healthy organizational culture. The activities approach is more directive and seeks to define what things should be done well that will give the greatest return. When you use results as the most important metic, you are choosing delegation that seeks to empower your team to create the best process. This HBR post is a great read:

“Here’s the dilemma: In a competitive, complex, and volatile business environment, companies need more from their employees than ever. But the same forces rocking businesses are also overwhelming employees, driving up their fear, and compromising their capacity.

It’s no wonder that so many C-Suite leaders are focused on how to build higher performance cultures. The irony, we’ve found, is that building a culture focused on performance may not be the best, healthiest, or most sustainable way to fuel results.”

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Seven Essential Steps Toward Building A Stronger Company Culture

Posted by on February 16, 2018

Organizational culture consists of the beliefs and values that allow people and processes to work together for producing the greatest results. It is far more strategic than tactical, however there are some best practices that cross over most organizations. This post by Micah Solomon contains some great advice:

“Whatever kind of company culture you’re looking to create, here is a sequence of seven steps that can help you get there. As a customer service consultant, I’ve limited my practice to cultures that aspire to focus on the customer and support employees as multi-dimensional human beings. So if you have more transactional, customer-agnostic cultural goals, the applicability of these seven steps may be limited.”

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The Critical Need For Different Leadership Voices

Posted by on January 15, 2018

Directive leadership has taken such a hit that it almost seems out of place in any leadership situation. Tell that to the passengers on any plane or to the patients in any major surgery and they would beg to disagree. Delegation on the other hand is never appropriate until the person has developed the confidence and competency they need to be successful. So leaders need the situational skills to develop different voices. Excellent post by Amy Jen Su:

“Ultimately, you should cultivate enough parts of your voice so that no matter the leadership situation or audience you find yourself facing, you can respond in an authentic, constructive, and effective way.”

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Make Civility The Norm On Your Team

Posted by on January 8, 2018

Almost everyone that works through teams believes there needs to be a healthy dose of conflict from time to time that will produce the greatest results. However, when team members are passive aggressive or unload and say something very critical towards another person, all trust can be lost. So the team leader’s responsibility is to establish the core values that will support civility. This post by Christine Portal is helpful:

“We all want to come to work and be treated with kindness and respect. Unfortunately, my research shows that there is rampant incivility in most organizations. I found that 98% of the workers I surveyed over the past 20 years have experienced rude behavior and 99% have witnessed it.”

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How To Ensure Change Translates Into Culture

Posted by on January 3, 2018

Leading change is one of the most challenging leadership assignments period. The pain of the present must be greater than the fear of the future for most people to even be open to change. The hard part though comes after all the communication of the new vision and now its time to embed the new process into the culture. This Forbes post will give you a good framework:

“Power dynamics are shifting. And though change brings a sense of liberation for some, for others, it brings angst, fear, stress and discomfort. Change is a scary or frustrating process for many.”

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Change Your Leaders To Change Your Culture

Posted by on November 27, 2017

I have spent a lot of time this year reading about the importance of organizational culture in the success of companies. There are many variables involved but the one constant is the attitude and core values of the leader. These leaders walk their talk and place a high priority on the environment where their people work. This Forbes post is a good read:

“Research done on culture and organizational performance by Kotter and Heskett defines culture as “…gained knowledge, explanations, values, beliefs, communication and behaviors of large group of people, at the same time and same place.”

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Is Execution Where Good Strategies Go To Die

Posted by on November 13, 2017

One of the greatest challenges in leadership is to take the hours of planning within a small group of leaders at the top and drive it down throughout the entire organization without loosing effectiveness. Great innovative ideas that come out of a small group of executive leaders sometimes simply don’t work well in the real world with execution constraints. This HBR post is excellent:

“Execution is an odd word. On the one hand, it means “the carrying out of a plan or course of action.” On the other, it means, “the carrying out of a death sentence.” When leaders “execute a strategy,” they usually mean the former — putting an idea into action. But those efforts all too often end up meaning the latter. Execution is often where strategies go to die.”

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