How to Detox Your Culture

To keep this newsletter digestible, the full article can be read on my new website (https://www.tonillemiller.com/post/howtodetoxyourculture)        

WHY CULTURE MATTERS

The saying ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast' is a vast understatement. Culture will absolutely make or break your organization in the form of productivity, engagement, agility, collaboration, innovation, customer satisfaction, burnout, turnover, and healthcare costs. A recent MIT study found the largest predictor of the Great Resignation was toxic work cultures............(full article can be found on my website)

WHAT EXACTLY IS CULTURE?

One of the biggest misconceptions is that culture is the office or the values on the wall. As mentioned in a previous article , this is not the case. Culture is the collective understanding of what’s acceptable amongst a group of people. It’s like the lifestyle of the organization that governs how people interact, how things get done, and what behaviors are tolerated. It transcends physical space. For example, whether people are at a client site, at a work happy hour sending an email during their commute, or working from home, they are demonstrating the culture in the ways they interact with each other. If you think of culture as the air the organization breathes, it's everyone’s responsibility to ensure its clean, healthy, and lifegiving. If we were to describe a healthy culture, meaning one that enables people to thrive the most, it would include behaviors that demonstrate learning, curiosity, respect, inclusion, and recognition. (full article can be found on my website)

HOW TO SPOT AND ADDRESS SIGNS OF A TOXIC CULTURE

Incongruence - Incongruence between what the organization says it values and what it actually does on a daily basis is extremely detrimental. This can look like leaders not walking their talk or shying away from calling out off-culture behavior. This misalignment signals that duplicitous behavior is ok and quickly erodes trust.

Leaders Choosing Not to Lead - Just like an absent parent in the family system, when leaders don’t set the vision and structure to guide and hold people accountable, it creates a cascade of dynamics such as silos and politics, as well as an environment of uncertainty, anxiety, and chaos. Which means no one is focusing on the actual work. To mitigate this, (full article can be found on my website)

Lack of Transparency, Especially When it's Critical - When there is a lack of transparency about how things work, how the business is doing or upcoming changes, it erodes trust and increases anxiety. In the absence of information, our brains start creating stories to make sense of things and they are rarely good. This is why it's paramount for leaders to communicate early and often, especially during times of change and uncertainty. Even if they don’t have all the answers, all they need to say they don’t know and will come back with the answer. This level of transparency and vulnerability builds trust and quells the rumor mills that will otherwise spread across the organization.

Tolerating Bad Behavior - We’ve all heard of the ‘no A$$hole rule’, but these folks are unfortunately all too common. They may show up as the rainmaker sales bro who treats everyone terribly but gets to stick around because he brings in so much revenue. It can also look like the micromanager or gaslighting bully, who has secured their spot because he/she is great at kissing up and kicking down. Research shows that even 1 bad actor like this lowers the performance of those around them by an average of 35%. The data also show this behavior becomes contagious to others in their sphere. That doesn’t even account for the costs associated with mental health, productivity loss, burnout, and attrition associated with it. (full article can be found on my website)

Lack of Candor - At the other end of the spectrum we’ll see a culture of mediocrity and passive aggression because people want to be ‘nice’, and as a result, do not hold each other accountable. One way to counter this is to create a culture of real-time feedback. (full article can be found on my website)

Lack of Psychological Safety - in an environment where there isn’t psychological safety, we’ll see a lack of agility, speed, and innovation, as well as information hoarding, silos, and plenty of bureaucracy. Because there isn’t a high level of trust in this culture, people don’t feel comfortable speaking up, being creative or taking risks. (full article can be found on my website)

You may want to check out a recent interview I did with the Transform Now podcast, where we discuss the importance of culture.

What are the most effective ways you’ve detoxed your culture? Leave your comments below.