Build Your Culture | 3 Culture Killers
Bean bag chairs.
Kegs.
Snacks.
Slides.
Rewards programs.
Ping-Pong.
These were the answers to fixing culture not too long ago. However, these awesome additions to the environment couldn’t rid the team of the three main culture killers. No amount of ping-pong and microbrews can help everyone love life at work and love life at home. Why? Because the 3 Culture Killers overpower the fun additions.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining about a good microbrew in the fridge at work, but let’s not kid ourselves. Those things don’t fix culture. Those things don’t fix “who” I’m about to share with you.
1) Vipers | Cultural Vipers are high performers who are individual performers. They suck the life out of everyone on the team, but keep hitting their numbers. Leaders are afraid to let Vipers work for someone else because of the numbers they hit. However, when you remove a viper from the team - your team usually flourishes. Their productivity is not worth the poison they inflict on everyone else whose on the team.
2) Sloths | Cultural Sloths are leaders who are slow to address challenges and issues that drain the team. When conflict arrives - sloths move too slow to resolve it and the issues get worse. A Cultural Sloth is a positional leader who does not address values, behaviors, attitudes and results that detract from the desired future state; thereby creating a new set of shadow values that slowly deteriorate an organization. (Shadow values are
3) Leech | A Cultural Leech is the person who always has a reason why something shouldn't be added or changed. They work in the margins to gain influence while disrupting productivity and momentum. They work under the radar until it’s too late to see what they’ve been doing all along.
Culture is created by the norms you allow in your organization. What is the acceptable way to make decisions? What is an acceptable way to communicate with the team? Are negative attitudes and backstabbing acceptable for high performers? Is collaboration OR individual performance celebrated?
Here’s a definition of culture: Culture is made up of the beliefs, values, attitudes, philosophies, artifacts and behaviors of an organization.
If you like your current culture - you are most likely doing something very intentional. If you don’t like your culture, you are most likely unintentionally creating something you don’t like.
There are two steps necessary to begin intentionally fixing your culture.
1) Write your desired culture down. Don’t worry about a perfect statement. Write a culture manifesto and keep reading it for a couple of weeks before moving forward with it.
2) Assess your current culture to know what and how to intentionally pivot towards your desired culture.
If you are ready to improve your culture and make your organization the best place to work give us a call. We can walk you through our Cultural Health Assessment to help you and your organization take a data-driven approach to improving the culture of your organization.
