Leaky Tire Syndrome

As I’m writing this, I’m procrastinating on something else. I’m letting the air drip out of one of my tires – figuratively. We all get distracted (some of us more than others). Some of it’s just how we’re wired, some of it’s to avoid doing something less enjoyable. For me – those less enjoyable things are reading long documents or articles. I enjoy the content when I’m really into them, but there’s a fine line between engaging content, and reading something that feels like the Ben Hur of articles (no offense).

Company culture suffers the same fate unfortunately. We tend to take it for granted. If it’s going well, we feel like we can let it ride. If we’re investing a lot and not feeling appreciated for the efforts we’re putting in, we scale back and say, “we’ve done enough.”? Sometimes, we just get so busy doing other things, it’s hard to keep it on the priority list – especially when you’re thinking about revenue, expenditures, headcount, and the myriad of other business issues companies face today.

The most common thing though is letting things ride. You’re in, what feels like, a regular cadence. January is this, April is that, July is the company picnic, October is … Halloween (my favorite btw), and then it’s the holidays.?

You build out events to try and engage on what you think employees want, but after a while, it stalls and flattens out – sort of like that leaky tire.? You know, the one where the idiot light on your dash goes off every few weeks, but it hasn’t been annoying enough for you to schedule an appointment or go to the tire shop to really get it looked at.? Eventually it gets colder out, and the temperature changes start affecting how often you have to put air in the tire (or when the light goes off).? What’s the effect?? Well – annoyance for one – having to fill up the tire every few weeks. The other side of it is that you’re wearing your tire out (couple hundred to replace that one tire – but you probably want to replace them in pairs).? That impacts gas mileage, so you’re losing money slowly on fuel efficiency, but bigger picture, you’re impacting your cars alignment AND the other tires on the car.? Eventually all those little annoyances add up to big dollars when the repair man cometh.??

Do you want to wait til the leaky tire has had enough of your procrastination? In the real world, in employee centric terms, this equates to people leaving, or a little worse – staying and not doing the work they should be doing.? BIGGER worse – their habits are picked up by others, and you have a bunch of disengaged workers, underperforming (possibly including some managers), and on and on it goes.

You see where I’m going here (or you’ve been distracted enough to skip around and see an SNL skit on YouTube, before coming back to this).? Your culture can’t be ignored. It must be addressed, maintained, and monitored at regular intervals. If you don’t, other things begin to break down including morale, productivity, engagement, customer satisfaction, etc.

We’re living in a realm where everything is important. If you can’t get to it all, it’s time to add the services of others, or hire some additional help. Procrastinating (hoping the problem solves itself or goes away, or avoiding a conflict resolution situation, uncomfortable conversation, etc.), isn’t the answer. Eventually you have to do the work. The question is, how long can it wait?? Here’s a better question, how bad will it get when your star employee gives notice to go elsewhere because someone wanted them more.

Don’t wait. You don’t have to have the perfect workplace culture, but you can build a better culture than you had yesterday. One day at a time. Start building a better culture today.