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The words "workplace culture" often bring to mind companies like Google or Pixar, with bright colors, open offices, company social activities, and an atmosphere of fun as well as hard work. The reality, however, is that a strong workplace culture does not have to be fun-loving to be satisfying – and if the culture is not already satisfying for your employees, then a foosball table is not going to help.
Prem Kumar, senior director of product for employee engagement solutions provider TINYPulse, defined workplace culture as the "ethos of the organization. It's what motivates, inspires and drives your organization. It's a sum of each employee's values, knowledge and interactions with one another."
S. Chris Edmonds, author of "The Culture Engine" and founder of The Purposeful Culture Group, narrows it further: "Culture is how the organization is operating: how people treat each other, what methods are in place [for interaction]." To Edmonds, successful culture, whether your company prefers T-shirts or ties, boils down to trust, respect and dignity.
Leaders, especially senior leaders, have not been asked to examine the culture aspect of the company, but it's becoming more important than ever. Edmonds said that the inherent impatience of millennials drives the need. The new generations are not content to put in 25 years with a company to get a gold watch. Rather, "they want a place where they are valued, mentored and allowed to work where they do their best.
The first step for any leader looking to improve the workplace culture is to determine the values that reflect the company. Once you have determined the core values that define your organization, you need to determine what concrete behaviors reflect those values.
It's up to the leaders to model the core values, from the CEO to the direct manager. When management models the defined values and behaviors, employees start to follow suit.
Edmonds noted that an improved culture leads to improved productivity.
"We regularly see performance go up 30 to 35 percent, and service up 40 percent or more as a result of improving the culture," he said. Senior leadership must stay dedicated to the new culture, said Edmonds. "The behaviors have to become ingrained so that it survives any change of leadership and the organization can evolve with its mission."
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There's a pervasive myth in the professional world that holding employees accountable for their work somehow prevents them from reaching their creative potential. This myth couldn't be further from the truth, but it's easy to see where it comes from -- a basic misunderstanding of what real accountability is.
True accountability isn't punitive. It is not something that comes to the fore only when someone makes a mistake. Rather, accountability means focusing on what can be done, rather than what's out of your control.
Most surprising of all: Dedication to accountability fosters creativity.
Far too often, people think that holding others accountable is a way of blaming or even punishing them for a perceived mistake. A culture of fear stifles risk-taking, the very life-blood of innovation. But positive accountability enhances the creative process by empowering employees to take ownership over circumstances.
Accountability is a positive force in any professional setting, representing a person's ability to rise above difficult circumstances by focusing on the things that she can control while accepting the things she can't. It's the ability to say, "What can I personally do to change this outcome?" and then follow a concrete course of action to achieve it. In this way, accountability opens the door to creative and innovative solutions.
The opposite of accountability is not creativity; it is finger-pointing and blaming others. A shortage of creative thinking from your team is a sign that employees are not taking accountability for results. By offering excuses about things outside of their control, they hold themselves back from accessing new solutions and generating new ideas. When people avoid taking accountability for the solutions, we don't access creativity, we don't get engagement, people commiserate around all the reasons why we can't get the result, and all the energy that could be applied to achieving the outcomes we need is wasted in the blame game.
Does accountability impact engagement and creativity? Absolutely! If you notice that an employee on your team is holding back ideas and is too concerned with "drawing inside the lines," open a dialogue to uncover what might be holding the employee back from feeling empowered to speak up and act. Redirect the focus, encouraging people to take accountability for factors that are within their control. With consistent leadership aimed at fostering a culture of accountability, the possibilities for innovation, productivity, engagement, and creativity are endless.
The obsession with predicting who may be a future star or the next top leader has influenced academic research and human resources practices alike. Yet 40% of designated “HiPos” — high-potential employees — end up not doing well in the future and at least one in two leaders disappointing, derailing, or failing to drive high levels of engagement and team performance. The main reason underlying this bleak state of affairs is that high potential nominations are contaminated by organizational politics. To be more precise, there are six dynamics that prevent organizations from identifying, promoting, and developing the right people for leadership roles, namely:
The politics of intuition.
The foremost reason for the failure of HiPo identification programs is that without science it is virtually impossible to assess potential. People love and trust their intuition, but when our evaluations are based on intuitive judgments, they are ripe for being led astray by biases and political undercurrents.
The politics of self-interest.
Those in charge of spotting potential are usually more interested in their own career than others’, and they tend to perceive a personal cost to promoting people who are a key asset, particularly when those people are better than the spotters.
The politics of avoidance.
At times, politics may even drive managers to nominate faux-pos (fake HiPos) purely to avoid uncomfortable situations.
The politics of favoritism.
Leaders tend to have asymmetrical information on different employees, and this personal limitation is addressed simply by picking the more familiar candidate — after all, “better the devil you know.”
The politics of ageism.
While rarely discussed, age is also a factor underlying the politics of potential.
The politics of gender.
As PwC’s seminal “leaking pipeline” report shows, a large number of women quit when they are experienced, mid-career, and at the level of manager/Senior manager. Decision makers (usually male-dominated groups) often ignore female HiPos.
In short, the politics of potential can prevent organizations from upgrading their leadership talent and make data-driven decisions an anomaly rather than the norm.
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