Jun
29
When Jason Fried from 37signals was asked "How did you create the culture at 37signals?” he answered as follows:
"You don’t create a culture. Culture happens. It’s the by-product of consistent behavior. If you encourage people to share, and you give them the freedom to share, then sharing will be built into your culture. If you reward trust then trust will be built into your culture.
Artificial
Artificial cultures are instant. They’re big bangs made of mission statements, declarations, and rules. They are obvious, ugly, and plastic. Artificial culture is paint.
Real
Real cultures are built over time. They’re the result of action, reaction, and truth. They are nuanced, beautiful, and authentic. Real culture is patina.
Don’t think about how to create a culture, just do the right things for you, your customers, and your team and it’ll happen."
Whilst I agree with Jason’s view, that a) culture takes time to develop and b) the culture is a by-product of consistent behaviour, culture doesn’t "just happen". Culture is the shadow of the leader. If Jason means that culture just happens, if you have the right leadership, then I support his view, and perhaps that is what he is say. The with the right leadership… culture just happens! Organisations that set out to create or build a culture, without changing the leadership behaviours, results in what Jason refers to as artificial cultures.
In the end, culture determines who’s in and who’s out…. Once you have the right leadership in place … then … culture just happens.
- Are you purposefully acting to develop your organisation’s culture?
- Do you have the right leadership in place?
- Are you hiring and promoting people who reinforce the culture you’re trying to develop?
Technorati Tags: Culture, Leadership, Management, Business, HR, Strategy
Mar
16
Leader: Are you purposely shaping your culture?
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An organisation’s culture can be a source of competitive advantage or a huge obstacle to achieving it’s objectives. The importance of culture really struck me after reading Lou Gerstner’s book "Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?" In his book Lou Gersner, the former CEO and Chairman of IBM, reflects on the turnaround he orchestrated during his time at IBM….
"I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game - it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value. Vision, strategy, marketing, financial management - any management system, in fact - can set you on the right path and can carry you for a while. But no enterprise - whether in business, government, education, health care, or any area of human endeavor - will succeed over the long haul if those elements aren’t part of its DNA."
As Gerstner proved, in the turnaround of IBM, that leaders can shape and indeed change an organisation’s culture. The fact that Lou Gerstner could change the culture, of one of the world’s largest organisations should give all leaders hope. Leaders are instrumental in shaping an organisations culture a post from Anecdote describes the leaders role….
"…Edgar Schein noted a decade ago: cultures are largely created and modified by the actions of the organisation’s leaders. And here we view leadership in its broadest sense as someone who people take notice of and follow their lead. There are a relatively small set of things leaders do that affect culture:
- What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis
- How leaders react to critical incidents and organisational crises
- How leaders allocate resources
- Deliberate role modelling, teaching, and coaching
- How leaders allocate rewards and status
- How leaders recruit, select, promote, and excommunicate
The short-hand for this list is, ‘How do you get ahead around here?’"
Leaders cannot afford to let an organisation’s culture just evolve. Just as Lou Gerstner shaped IBM’s culture based upon an end goal, leader who wants to share their organisations culture need an end goal. The key to effectively shaping your team’s or your organisation’s culture begins with purpose. Wikipedia defines purpose as "Purpose in its most general sense is the anticipated aim which guides action." Leaders wanting to shape an organisations culture need purposefully act, aligning all the above six leadership practices towards the organisation’s end goal and purpose.
- Are you purposely acting to shape your organisation’s culture?
- What are you paying attention to?
- How do you react to critical moments?
- What are you teaching?
- What do yo allocating resources to?
- What do you reward?
- Who are you recruiting and promoting?
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Business, Culture, IBM, Management, Purpose, Vision, Values
Mar
14
Culture is the shadow of the leader….
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“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a Leader” - John Quincy Adams
It’s primarily the leaders actions that inspire people to do more, to be more and to learn more. It’s the actions of the leader which leads to an organisations culture. In a nutshell, culture represents “the way we do things around here”. Culture is the shadow of the leader. Looking at your team or organisations culture you see the leaders reflection. The reflection we see can be a difficult for us to handle. If not careful, we respond by trying to defend or to rationalise away why what we see in others is not of our making. In this way, we fail to take responsibility for what has resulted from our actions. Without taking responsibility the first steps require to change the situation becomes impossible….!
As difficult as it may be, we need to face the reality the our team and organisations culture is a reflection of our leadership. Accepting this responsibility is the first step to change and as we all know, change begins ourselves. As Ghandi said many years ago we all need to strive to become the “change we want to see in the world“…. in this case we need to be the change we want to see in others…!
- What are your actions inspiring others to become?
- What are your actions inspiring others to do?
- What are your actions inspiring others to learn?
Technorati Tags: Action, Management, Leadership, Culture, Business, Quote, Responsibility
Feb
20
Sheepwalker?
Filed Under Leadership Practices | 3 Comments
Seth Godin has a great post on “Sheepwalking” which he defines as:
“..the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job and enough fear to keep them in line.”
This is true of many organisations today, looking for people who can “fit in”, get with the programme and not rock the boat. Conformance to the organisation’s expectations is what’s required. Seth goes on to say that…
“many organizations go out of their way to hire people that color inside the lines, that demonstrate consistency and compliance. And then they give these people jobs where they are managed via fear. Which leads to sheepwalking. (”I might get fired!”)…… What a waste.”
The solution…..?
“Step one is to give the problem a name. Done. Step two is for anyone who sees themself in this mirror to realize that you can always stop. You can always claim the career you deserve merely by refusing to walk down the same path as everyone else just because everyone else is already doing it…… The biggest step, though, comes from anyone who teaches or hires. And that’s to embrace non-sheep behavior, to reward it and cherish it.”
I think that this post impacted me because I see sheepwalkers at work everyday! People content to conform to the expectation of management. In so doing we lose, in that we settle for second best, we trade our passion and vision, for the perceived safety and security of a job. The result is wasted potential, we fail to fulfill our purpose, we live a life of mediocrity and apathy. I think the price we pay is huge. It’s definitely a greater price than I’m willing to pay!
“As long as we wish for safety, we will have difficulty pursuing what matters” - Peter Block, “The Answer to How is Yes“
Recognise that You Are Powerful Beyond Measure
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be - brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so small
that other people won’t feel insecure around you.We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in us, it’s in everyone.
As we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.- Marianne Williamson, 1992
So, Are you a sheepwalker?
Technorati Tags: Hiring, Leadership, Management, Culture, Business, Quote, Sheepwalking
Sep
3
High performing cultures share five key values
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An article by William C. Finnie provided some insight into five key values that support high performing cultures of companies like GE, 3M and Johnson & Johnson. The five values discovered by Dr. Robert Lefton, co-founder of Psychological Associates, who works with Fortune 500 companies using behavioral science to provide business solutions, are:
- Openness and candor: Nothing truly good happens without candor. Jack Welch (”Winning” chapter 2) points to three ways candor leads to higher performance. First, it involves more people, and more ideas surface. Second, candor results in speedier decisions, a necessity in the global marketplace. Finally, candor cuts costs by replacing meaningless meetings and mind-numbing presentations with “real conversations.”
- Collaboration: The benefits of collaboration are enormous. Once Detroit automakers got research and development, engineering, operations and marketing working together, the time to launch a new car was cut from 60 months to 30 months.It’s easy to talk about teamwork but difficult to achieve. People are naturally protective and territorial. Protecting your turf is almost evolutionary. You have to rise above it.
- Common shared goals: This is another way of saying a good mission and compelling vision. It’s what Jim Collins calls a BHAG — Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal (”Built to Last” 1994). A shared goal that grabs people in the gut is the “hard strategy” element that can motivate people to work together.
- Involvement: Getting the different perspectives of everyone on the management team leads to a better mission statement and strategy. Similarly, departmental plans are better when they reflect broad involvement. More important, getting your people involved in developing and discussing common shared goals leads to understanding and commitment, which are essential for effective implementation.
- Feedback: Feedback is formalized candor. It compares performance to plan. It identifies root causes for deviations. It eliminates “hockey stick” projections because you have to start this year’s plan by comparing last year’s actual performance with last year’s plan. Feedback is essential for the continuous improvement of both people and businesses.
These attributes are directly related to high performance. This does not mean that all organisations should have similar cultures, each company has it’s own unique identity and character, however these values should be lived by leaders and encouraged at all levels.
As a practicing leader how does your leadership style compare to these five values? Are you open? Do you collaborate? Do you involve others? Do you provide feedback?
Technorati Tags: Values, Culture, Management, Leadership, Collaboration, Business, Organisational Leadership, Feedback
Feb
24
Culture Drives Success
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Fast Company Now has a short but intersting article on the importance of culture in driving organisational success.
“I came to see in my time at IBM that ‘culture’ isn’t just one aspect of the game - it is the game.” - Lou Gerstner, Former IBM CEO, credited with its turnaround
The article suggests the following steps as a simple approach to identifying and changing a teams culture. Consider the team/group/organization you’re leading:
- Look at your vision/mission statement and jot down the behaviors that everyone supposedly follows.
- On a second list jot down the behaviors that everyone actually follows.
- Pick the one discrepancy that annoys you the most.
- Make it a top priority to change it.
- Have a conversation with colleagues on why each of you think the discrepancy exists.
- Agree on some structures to put in place to ensure that change happens (communication, processes, rewards etc).
Technorati Tags: Leadership; Management; Business
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