Does your corporate culture stink?
Corporate culture is important because it determines how your business feels and behaves. A bad corporate culture will stop any organization from reaching its full potential.
Here are 2 blogs that identify when it’s time for your corporate culture to change and 1 that tells you how to change it:
6 signs your company’s culture stinks
Fast Company’s contributor Matt Ehrlichman takes a look at why some organization’s corporate culture stinks. These are his practices to avoid:
- You’ve got gossips in your ranks. It will eventually erode an organization’s culture and energy.
- Your leadership team has bad habits. Ehrlichman wisely points out ‘your leadership is the best indicator of the entire organization and so employees’ bad tempers, sloppiness, lack of collaboration, and general attitude provide valuable insight into the health of the company.’
- Your managers’ hands are too clean. (i.e., managers are disengaged from the front lines)
- Your employees are competing–with each other. Ehrlichman suggests competition is good, but even better when the focus is on external forces.
- You don’t play together. Relationship building is critical to talent retention.
- You lack school spirit — wise words from the author, “the moment an employee stops believing in the company and taking pride in their job significance, your castle will fall.”
Read more about Ehrlichman signs in Fast Company.
Five signs your office culture is terrible
Owen Linderholm writes for Yahoo! News and shares Kevin Kuske (Chief Anthropologist and General Manager for an office furniture company) insights into when your office culture is bad:
- Everyone there behaves with caution. People are more creative and innovative when they can be themselves at work, he says.
- Employees are robotic drones. This leads to low levels of passion and energy.
- You can’t glean any clues about the brand or the people behind it when you walk in the door. A dynamic workforce should shout out from the reception desk, he highlights.
- There is a complete lack of fun. “Meaningful fun is about people connecting with each other,” Kuske says.
- There’s no movement and little interaction. No informal meetings, means a bad culture.
Read more about these insights and how to overcome these impediments at Yahoo! News.
How to Change Your Organization’s Culture
Ok, we’ve identified that the office corporate culture stinks. Now what? We’re turning to the Wall Street Journals adaptation of “The Wall Street Journal Guide to Management” by Alan Murray. Here, Murray identifies that in order to make change, ‘you must win the hearts and minds of the people you work with, and that takes both cunning and persuasion.’ The following suggestions are offered to make the changes:
- Start with people who have disproportionate influence in the organization.
- Look for ways to get people to experience the harsh realities that make it necessary.
- Look for ways to redistribute resources toward “hot spots” – activities that require few resources but result in large change – and away from “cold spots” – or areas with large resource demands, but relatively low impact.
- Appoint a “consigliere” – a highly respected insider, who knows who is fighting you, who is supporting you.
Read more tips about changing your corporate culture at Wall Street Journal.
