Culture happens in an organization, whether you pay attention to it or not. And, as I have said to more than one CEO in the past: “you get the culture you deserve.”
What leaders are still struggling with today (other than unpredictable supply chains, COVID fear, uncertainty, fatigue, and finding talent) is how important culture is to creating an all-powerful magnet to attracting, retaining and engaging talent that then goes on to create happy customers.
And as I mentioned countless times before, the foundational building block to your culture is your organization’s guiding principles or values.
Values, when used correctly, create a belief system in the business that guides behavior and decision making. When brought to life, they will create an employment brand that attracts people that believe the same thing. Those people will bring their hearts and minds to the job and will, most often, work harder towards a cause than their salary alone.
When an organization is struggling and I get asked for advice on how to stop the hemorrhaging of cash, I always find what I call “Values Fading”.
Values Fading is a fancy way of saying that the organizational values are posted on the boardroom wall however, leaders pick and choose the times when they use them.
When Values Fading is tolerated or goes unchecked, the resultant behavior becomes the new set point for the culture. Then the next Values Violation drives the culture further down into the abyss.
There is no ”day-off” for leaders when it comes to bringing the values to life. Yes, there is pressure to perform and hit targets (usually set to achieve a bonus plan for senior leaders and almost always for short-term gain). The moment the pressure to achieve targets creates pressure on stated values – unless a brave leader steps in and calls out the values violation, there will be Values Fading.
When this happens, ‘Collective Intelligence’ will kick in and people who normally follow the rules will also start to push the boundaries of the values in order to comply with management pressure.
As a leader, you are not responsible for results. You are responsible for the people that deliver results. If you are not bringing the organization’s values to life and protecting them from ‘Fading’, you are not being responsible to the people that are responsible for delivering the results.
Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, International Keynote Speaker, and TEC Top Speaker of the Year for 2018. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, connect with Robert on LinkedIn.
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Tags: Business, Business Culture, Employee Engagement, It's Already Inside, Leader, Leadership, Marketing, Robert Murray, Robert S. Murray, Self-Awareness, Success, Team, Values
