React vs. Respond: Improving Your Company's Culture

Re-act: Respond with hostility, opposition, or a contrary course of action to.

Re-spond: To react favorably to.

When laying the foundation for a thriving culture within a company whether it’s to maximize potential, achieve growth or turn around a struggling company it is imperative that the foundation laid is one of responding and not reacting. Reactions are at the root of inefficient time management, gossip-culture, finger-pointing, and toxic leadership. Responses are typical of a culture that is well rounded, confident, well-led and with an overall sense of teamwork necessary for the greater good of the organization.

Companies with a reactionary culture find each and every day mired in running from problem to problem. They may very well have a team of competent individuals; however, if leadership doesn’t allow for a top-down mentality of responding versus reacting then this culture will be nearly impossible to shift. It’s key in this situation to properly empower individuals to make the decisions necessary to do their jobs, even if mistakes are made. Each mistake becomes a learning opportunity and the right people in the right position, when empowered in a response culture, will not continue with the same mistakes time and again.

Ask yourself the following questions about what happens when a problem arises at your company:

Do people look to avoid or shift blame?

Do people look for a quick fix and easy solution?

Once the problem is resolved, does everyone breathe a sigh of relief and forget it?

If you’re answering yes to the above questions then you have identified signs of a React Culture in your company.

The following answers to these questions would help to confirm your company operates from a Respond Foundation:

No, the people at my company first identify any role they played that allowed the problem to arise or persist. They take it personally even if not directly their fault.

No, people study the problem to search not just for the “how” but more importantly the “why”. Finding the “why” identifies holes in your processes or communications that when properly addressed will insure problems of that nature don’t occur if everyone does in fact do their part.

No, people don’t rush past the problem they confidently put it in their rearview. Occasionally, they glance back just to see how far they’ve come and smile about the effort they put into solving that problem and prevent it from happening again.

It’s vital to the overall health of any company to identify and correct a Reactionary Culture. Reactionary Cultures make for angry and overstressed leaders, demoralized employees and a toxic culture not conducive to success, innovation and endurance. Even when the proper personnel is in place if the culture is one of reaction then success will either be non-existent or much more difficult than necessary. The good employees will find a way to abandon ship and you’ll be left with those who offer little and are there for the paycheck only. This is definitely not the environment any of us would want for our company.

I often use this identification in consulting jobs to insure that any efforts toward personnel improvements and coaching, sales initiatives, leadership improvement and coaching, team building or any other efforts aren’t wasted on a broken Reactionary Culture.

So, now is the time to take a good long look in the mirror and ask read the following chart to identify a few traits of the contrasting culture:

Thank you for reading. I hope that you and your company continuously strive to be better each day. Business is my passion and I want to see you and yours succeed too!

I’ll expand more on React vs. Respond in future blogs. Please feel free to check out Crown Consulting Solutions at www.crownconsultingsoltuions.net. CCS can also be found on Facebook.

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