Culture doesn’t just fail, it starts with a tiny crack…

Over the course of the past few months, I have shared some thoughts and insights on how we can build happier and more sustainable organisations by Making it Human.

But it’s rare to be in a situation where we start from scratch – designing an organization from the ground up and establishing a brand-new culture without the legacy and hangovers from years gone by.

Exploring the culture of an organization is like geology - studying rocks to understand the history of the earth. The layers of minerals and pockets of sediment are built up over years, together creating the environment we experience day to day. In organisations, cultures evolve constantly and comprise micro-climates, sub-cultures and pockets of history, i.e. cultures incorporated through acquisitions and long-serving managers enforcing their own ways of working. It’s a living, breathing, ecosystem and this needs very careful monitoring and management to ensure positive experiences and transformation.

MIT research in 2022 reported that people are 10.4 x more likely to leave an organisation if there is a toxic culture and Linkedin’s Global talent report (2022) revealed 40% of candidates consider company culture a top priority when deciding whether to join an organization. Toxic cultures have a seriously damaging impact and the problem is rife. 1 in 10 employees report experiencing a toxic work culture and you don’t have to look too far to see headlines supporting this - WeWork, Uber, the Metropolitan Police, Boeing, to name a few.

Cultural failings can result in safety breeches, harassment, discrimination, criminal activity and even loss of life. This all starts with a tiny crack. Understanding what and where these are can help organisations to build healthy and sustainable cultures for many years to come.

In the next part of this series, I will explore the culture cracks so often found simmering in organisations and share suggestions to help mitigate these before catastrophe strikes.

Culture Crack 1: When time in meetings equals success (I’m soooo busy!)

Over-hearing casual conversations between employees, or the informal chat before a meeting begins, can provide an illuminating window into employees’ perception of what is valued within a company. At so many organisations, there’s a focus on measures of ‘busy-ness’ - volume of meetings, hours spent working, often during late and unsociable hours. Conversation turns to light competition – a fast-paced interaction to determine exactly who is the busiest – and the colleagues return to their to-do lists and back-to-back calls, only coming up for air when absolutely essential. Constant and visible activity is almost an addiction.

If you regularly encounter interactions between colleagues like this, with little focus on quality, impact or meaning of the work itself, there could be issues bubbling.

At its worse, this culture can lead to employees burning out as they feel pressure to work long-hours and be seen to be contributing. Sadly, many Professional & Financial Services firms have been in the headlines for harbouring exhausted, even suicidal, employees. It can spiral to candidates turning-down job-offers as the internal culture seeps externally through job sites and networks. It can result in huge inefficiencies, loss of innovation and improvement, as teams feel the route to success is visible time invested rather than outcomes achieved.

This culture crack could be silently expanding for many right now as the ‘productivity paradox’ highlighted by Microsoft in their research revealed that whilst 87% of employees feel they are productive working at home, 85% of Managers report hybrid work has made it more difficult to have confidence that employees are being productive. Trust is of course a critical facet for feelings of security, belonging and empowerment. Our technology-enabled, always-on lifestyles mean there is greater need to monitor and nudge this aspect in the right direction to maintain a healthy approach and balance but equally to avoid a sense of employee surveillance.

If you see this behaviour in your organisation, you might have an issue with…

Workplace: Creating the conditions for people to thrive.?

Actions you can take to strengthen your culture before this crack expands:

1. Explore what people think performing well means. You might need to do some re-setting of expectations around inputs (e.g. time, busy-ness) and outputs (results, achievements, innovations)
2. Check the behaviours you are visibly rewarding and celebrating in your organisation – is this feeding the visibly busy = success belief?
3. Explore perceptions of managers around productivity – do you have a productivity paradox simmering? Are managers adopting surveillance techniques and feeding a culture of busy = good? Seek ways to interrupt this to build trust and transparency between employees and their managers
4. Understand and?create space for different preferences?– time and place mean different things now – and enabling individuals to flex their approach to focused work and collaborative work can bring great benefit
5. Role-model respect for home/work boundaries from the top, e.g. not sending emails out of hours, and ask individuals working long-hours how this could be reduced
6. If a hybrid work model is applicable to your organisation - ensure people have the right tools and space to work effectively anywhere
7. Identify blockers to productivity and ask teams what would help to resolve these, e.g. gaps in knowledge, capability and tools. If you couldn’t attend every meeting, how would you solve issues?
8. Consider team or organisation-wide commitments to ‘meeting and email’ free time, e.g. digital detoxes, or dedicating time to simply spending time together in person

Read more about creating conditions for people to thrive: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/creating-conditions-arbejdsgl%2525C3%2525A6de-sarah-mclellan%3FtrackingId=VkgqKkLGRdGCyzudZPNuGw%253D%253D/?trackingId=VkgqKkLGRdGCyzudZPNuGw%3D%3D