Organizational culture is the Elephant in the room. Big, powerful and capable of trampling under its feet anything that it doesn’t like. It is rarely addressed because despite its size it is virtually invisible.
The extent of its influence, however, is not. Dysfunctional and unethical behavior, bickering between coworkers, poor customer service and employee disengagement from the goals of the organization are plain for all to see.
By making the Elephant visible, organizations have opportunities to shape behaviors and attitudes that support the strategic and operational aims of the enterprise. The mighty Elephant will be tamed.
One measure of whether the Elephant is tamed and encouraging the appropriate behaviors required to implement strategy and deliver operationally is “employee engagement.” Simply put, do employees enjoy working for the organization and are they willing to do all that they can to ensure its success?
A performance-based culture is one in which employees are committed and enabled to finding ways to do things better and find new solutions for customers. It is a culture in which day-to-day performance improvement is expected, rewarded and hardwired to the strategic and operational goals of the organization.
Whichever way you look at it, culture is about people, and in any setting, be it at familial, social or organizational, the culture is more successful when the people within the specified group feel a positive connection to that group and when the individual feels that what they do personally and with others has a substantive impact on what the group is aiming to achieve.
In short, finding a sense of meaning in what they do enriches both the employee and the group.
Many leaders define execution simply as the ability to set a goal and achieve it. what’s difficult-and rare-is the ability to achieve a critical goal while living in the midst of a raging pressure of day-to-day operations.
And it is even more difficult when achieving the goal requires changing the behaviors of a lot of people. Great teams operate with a high level of accountability. Without it, team members go off in all directions with each doing what he/she thinks is most important.
In most organizations, accountability means the annual performance review, hardly an engaging experience whether you are giving or receiving the review. It can also mean being called on the carpet for something you failed to accomplish.
When you think of a team that has a culture of discipline and execution, you expect to hear that they are also creative and innovative. A strong performance culture produces results not from the exercise of authority but from the fundamental desire of each individual team member to feel significant, to do work that matters, and ultimately, to win.
Since changing human behavior is such a big job, many leaders face challenges when trying to persuade people to execute their highly important goals. In fact, at Agla Consult Ltd we’ve found that most teams go through five stages of behavioral change, and we hope to help you understand and manage your way through these stages.
“The inherent preferences of organizations are clarity, certainty, and perfection. The inherent nature of human relationships involves ambiguity, uncertainty, and imperfection. How one honors, balances, and integrates the need of both is the real trick of management”
– Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos
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