A company culture trumps its products, services, or even people. It is that important.
I was reminded of this over the weekend when I was talking with someone who recently joined a local company. This company even has a positive outside buzz about it.
He related to me that during initial training, he noticed that there were printed lists on cube walls that employees of this company had created, things to watch out for. Typed memos that said things like….Number 3. Be sure you cover yourself, your boss will take your good idea and take complete credit for it. This was on several cube walls, and in public sight.
I am all for employee empowerment, letting people reach their potential and not micro-managing them. But I draw the line at this sort of disrespectful-in-your-face-us-vs-them attitude.
If you are a worker, or even a manager, and see this sort of thing happening at your company, what would you do?
You can fix it…no matter your level.
1. Don’t participate.
2. Ask if the person realizes how negative these things are to others. That some of you are trying to do the right thing here, and this sort of thing has negative influence. It hurts you, embarrasses you. And, that it makes you less proud of where you work.
3. If he or she doesn’t take them down after being somewhat embarrassed, ask what you can do to help solve some of these issues that are being raised.
If it is your company, or your department, do not tolerate this sort of festering to go on.
5 users commented in " How To Create or Fix a Company’s Culture "
I totally agree–GL, if we aren’t part of the solution we are the problem. The natural flow at any company, or in our personal lives seems to be negative. The question I ask myself is who is the company, and am I fully invested?
Hey—good question—-how does a company hear its true outside buzz—should there be a scale 1-10–with 1 being sick and in need of outside help etc…
Good question…the buzz I mentioned was just local press, good will in general about this company. I am thinking, however, that it might not all be rosey inside the company. This is somewhat telling to me.
I agree totally what you guys are saying and have other questions: Is management aware of these publicly posted items? If so, what is their followup? If not, is that part of the problem?
If a new trainee can see it and observe it, then some manager-type at some level should be seeing it too. I am thinking they simply do not know what to do, or don’t want to be seen as a company suck up or something.
Although I agree that a manager’s job includes counseling their employees on proper etiquette and attitude, I don’t agree that a “crack-down” on these lists would change the culture. It might change what is displayed on the walls, but not the underlying truth of what is going on. You know what they say, the truth will always out. So if the truth is that the culture of the managers is to suck their staff dry and give them no credit, the anger and resentment will continue to fester and roil even if every list is replaced with the serenity prayer. In fact, it might get worse. The staff would have had their one little revenge and release taken away from them and no longer have any way to blow off steam.
Personally, I find most cynicism amusing and a nice release from frustration (which is something that is in EVERY job and workplace) unless I can tell that it has an edge that pushes it from funny (Dilbert ha-ha) to negativity (such as the example above). If people in my unit posted lists like those I would try to get someone to tell me WHY and consider if I needed to change anything in my own behavior. If I assessed that they were being unnecessarily negative I would tell them that they were having an impact on the workplace which is counter to the metrics for collegiality and team work that are in their performance plan. That’s me – everything is fun and games until something goes wrong, and then I make sure that we have clarity and the documentation is in place.
Sorry, you made me put on my work hat for a minute. Let’s go back to doing something fun…
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