Everywhere you go in business you hear about the importance of culture. Culture drives 750% more profitability and much greater retention. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” – Peter Drucker. That is absolutely true from my perspective. There is nothing more important to a business than its culture.
I’m stealing this line from The Fight Club but I think talking about culture fits the same top rules as Fight Club – you do not talk about it.
So why would I say you shouldn’t talk about it? Why wouldn’t you talk about the most important thing in business? When I say you shouldn’t talk about it, I mean you shouldn’t talk about it broadly to the team and say things like “in 2021, we need to improve our culture” at a company meeting. As a leadership team, you should talk about culture. Your recruiter should highlight the culture to candidates for new positions. It just shouldn’t be a “campaign” internally just like a recent comment I heard from Simon Sinek where he said you can’t go to a class on how to be an authentic leader. Culture comes from the top and leadership has to be authentic. If leadership has to be “coached” to be authentic, then you probably need a “culture committee”. If that’s the case, you’re never going to have a great corporate culture.
The more you talk about culture to the team the more the team thinks “hmm, maybe we don’t have a great culture if we are always talking about how to improve it”. In my view, you don’t improve it by talking about – you just cast more doubts about why it needs to be fixed.
So, how do you improve culture? That will take more than one blog article and it depends on many factors – the level of employees that work at your business, the age of most employees, the office situation, the manager to employee ratio. It takes a deep analysis to try to fix the culture in a business.
TO BE CONTINUED
EricNewell.com 