Work Place Culture: Have you taken the temperature lately?! Culture ties directly into organizational success and is a direct function of leadership

My recommendation is to ask people throughout the organization three questions:

What is the culture in our company?

What would you like it to be?

How can we get there??

What is the culture in our organization?

In other words, is your mission statement just a bunch of words on a wall?

When was the last time you referred to it during a meeting and used it as a guide to make decisions?

Is it current or was it written a long time ago or with other leaders who are no longer present?

What would you like it to be?

Culture trumps policies and procedures.

Culture makes or breaks morale and directly affects employee retention.?

In what type of environment do your employees want to be working?

How can we get there?

My direct experience has been that it's best to bring in an outside facilitator to gather, review and ultimately debrief the results gathered from the answers to the three questions.

Clearly, we want people to be open and honest with their responses and if there’s any chance they feel “unsafe” responding to the questions because they fear there may be consequences, how honestly do you believe they’ll respond?

As Albert Einstein said:?

“We cannot solve problems at the same level of thinking that we were at when we created those problems.”

We thrive in environments that respect us and allow us to (1) feel included, (2) feel safe to learn, (3) feel safe to contribute, and (4) feel safe to challenge the status quo. If we can't do these things, if it's emotionally expensive, fear shuts us down.

What does it say about an organizational culture if people only feel safe and comfortable expressing what they think “Management” wants to hear?

Ron has led our team through discussions…allowing us to develop a “Culture Statement”..

As a result of this work, we as an organization are referring to the Culture Statement and the values as a foundation to make decisions together for our organization.

Ron is a fine facilitator, “a real Mensch” and we look forward to continuing to work with him as we uncover other leadership and management development needs.

?-Andrew Kuszynski