When I build teams, either for my own ventures or when I assist others to establish the foundations for growth, I have one mindset: my only job is to “surround myself with people who are better than I am, and to ensure they have the tools necessary to succeed.”
What does this actually mean? First, when you start a business you do everything from picking up the garbage to drafting documents, to building the product and delivering the services. Then, as the business grows, I hire specialists for each area of the business, and each of them must be more skilled in their area than I am. Next, I need to ensure they have the tools, staff, funds, additional training, and, most importantly, working culture and environment to succeed. Obviously, the details go deeper, but the fundamentals remain constant.
The CEO is generally recognized as the single most important factor in setting corporate culture. Without their commitment to everyone around them, any organization-wide cultural initiative or guidance is destined to fail.
Corporate culture initiatives require a holistic approach that are sustained by a unwavering focus over time. Every single staff member can affect culture, but only some have access to all the levers of cultural change. These are the managers who hire, promote, and terminate personnel, build and manage budgets, and communicate guidelines and policies. Ideally, all managers are operating in unison and in a coordinated manner, because if they are not, confusion reigns, and toxicity brews.
Employees are understandably baffled when the top team fails to address toxicity. Often, however, this inaction represents corporate blindness to an issue and challenges within internal communications. In a positive environment, staff would alert management to issues. If staff are uncomfortable doing so, a problem exists!
However, the more senior you are in an organization and the larger it is, the more difficult it becomes to manage individual issues, as there are dozens of objectives demanding attention. Without a determined focus on culture and time and attention scheduled to discuss, assess, and address issues, it is easy to understand why management loses focus on cultural issues.
Most CEOs are aware of culture and genuinely concerned about their employees and want to do the right thing. But no one can succeed without assistance, and managers are no different. Transparency is possibly the most powerful assistance when it comes to these issues. Publicly reporting progress helps keep the pressure on senior leaders to maintain focus when it comes to culture. External pressure from the staff most keenly affected by initiatives to stay the course is powerful. By publicly reporting progress against their cultural aspirations, rather than simply posting a list of core values on the corporate website, the actions and steady resolution to improving culture is communicated on a daily basis.
Modeling the behavior expected from employees is crucial for leaders. Employees look to leaders for guidance on culture, but they tend to discount lofty statements about abstract values. Instead, they closely observe what leaders do for signals about what behavior is encouraged, expected, and tolerated. Many employees are skeptical about whether their leaders live corporate values in their daily actions, and interestingly, for most companies, there is no correlation between what companies aspire to and how employees assess them on corporate core values.
It is possible to perform these assessments and use the results to improve!
Tracking progress with objective data is essential. In too many organizations, bad news gets filtered out as it moves up the hierarchy. As a result, senior managers and leadership often think they’ve done a better job addressing toxicity and cultural issues than they actually have.
Leaders cannot afford to disregard external employee reviews when trying to assess their corporate culture, warts and all. As soon as they do, internal issues become public knowledge, and everyone is damaged. Sometimes, an inherently toxic individual is the root of these posts, but if they are widespread, it’s another matter.
Addressing a toxic workplace requires top leaders to commit to and sustain focus on cultural detox. By quantifying the benefits, publicly reporting progress, modeling expected behavior, and tracking progress with honest data, leaders can effect positive change and create a healthier, more productive work environment for all employees.
If you are unsure how to proceed, there are people, like ourselves, who can help!