Tag Archive for managers

5 Characteristics of a Cutthroat Culture

March 25, 2013 Uncategorized 3 comments

cut_throat_business_ii_by_noizkrew-d4wcxob“He exemplifies everything our culture is about. He models our core values; heck, he literally wrote the book on ‘em. This won’t come as a surprise to any of you, so without further adieu, this year’s employee of the year award goes to…Niccolo Machiavelli!”

<crickets>

Hard to imagine, yes? Back in the day (like way, way back), that may not have been too far-fetched. Truth be told, his ghost wanders the hallways of many of our organizations.machiavelli

Most in corporate America wouldn’t claim his philosophies as their own, but too often our workplaces hint at something else. Underneath the cheesy veneer of many team portraits is often a culture that you wouldn’t guess is there based on the smiling people with the flawless teeth and impeccable hair in those stock photos.

So what are the characteristics of a cutthroat culture that would make Mr. Machiavelli proud?

1. Power rules.

Power dynamics will manifest differently from organization to organization. Sometimes it’ll be overt. Other times, not so much. People in positions of “authority” tend to lord it over those they perceive to be “below” them. Intimidation is not only an acceptable influence tactic, but a typical one. Getting and keeping power and influence within the organization is one of the ultimate ends of people within this sort of culture.

2. Competition is anything but friendly.139607135v3_225x225_Front

If you look closely, human remains litter the ground at the base of that corporate ladder. People will do anything–anything–to get ahead. If that means they have to mischaracterize your idea, so be it. Maybe it’s persuading others to take sides against you in an ongoing organizational debate. Everybody thinks they’re Michael Corleone.

3. Ego is a main motivator.

There will be statements about performance and efficiency and teamwork and collaboration and all those things that are good in and of themselves, but lurking just underneath the surface is the real reason people in this sort of culture want completa-egothose things: ego. It’s a very important thing to them that they’re a very important thing. If they take on projects, you can be assured that they see something in it for them. It’s all about prestige. The spotlight. The limelight.

There’s another entire post on unchecked ego being weakness masquerading as strength, but I’ll spare you that one. For today anyway.

4. Everybody’s a critic.

Not of themselves, of course.

I think it’s important to push each other, challenge assumptions, and so on; but in this scenario the vibe is super critical and hyper-cynical consistently.

I think it’s important that departments and areas cross-pollinate ideas; but in this scenario everyone knows more about everyone else’s departments than those within the department. You know the type–they know more about operations than Operations, more about training than Training, more about finance than Finance, etc. And they take every opportunity to let people know.SI Exif

5. Nothing’s ever good enough.

Especially if someone else does it.

Why does it matter? It’s things like this that drive good people crazy. People generally want to work hard, do good things with other good people, have purpose, and feel like they and their teammates are contributing to something bigger.

Aggressive, cutthroat cultures make it far less likely that that will happen. People learn through their experiences — their perception of their part in the organization’s story. Those experiences tell them that the way to get ahead in that particular context — and maybe even the way to simply survive – is to consolidate power, compete to win at all costs, embrace egomania, criticize everybody and everything, and realize that nothing is ever, every good enough.

Machiavelli would love it. Maslow? Not so much.

Leaders: We’ve Got To Win Them

December 7, 2012 Uncategorized 7 comments

Let’s assume for a minute that you’ve been putting some of the foundational, building-block things in place to foster and support healthy culture (things like clarifying the values, making sure teammates understand them, aligning recruiting and hiring strategies with them, etc). You could almost kind of think of these things as a framework. You’re trying to create the conditions within which healthy culture is more likely to happen. 

But meaningful change isn’t just a mechanical thing that happens if we publish values and align our “stuff” around them. Those things help set the stage, but we have to find ways to help our people align around them.

And while I don’t think many of us would deny the need for that sort of stuff, and while it appears that in many organizations most managers and execs will nod and smile when asked if they’d prefer a great workplace environment; it’s important that we understand that just having the framework in place won’t automatically produce the things we all want to see in our respective organizations.

We can talk all we want about having an engaged workplace (or being more efficient, or having better training, or whatever), and we can even really want an engaged workplace (or those other things); but until we—meaning you, me, and every other manager or leader—start doing things as individual leaders to create that environment with our teams, it’s not going to happen across the organization.

So I think we—myself definitely included—need to take a look at what we’re doing to win our Team members. If we’ve got bitter Team members, we’ve got to do the uncomfortable work of admitting that we may have played at least some part in that; and then we need to put that vulnerability into practice. Find out what has them feeling what they feel (whether you feel like it’s fair that they feel that or not).

If we have folks that seem unhappy or that aren’t jiving with the culture stuff, we’ve got to dig in and figure out why that’s the case and what we can do to help them. It’s easier just to shrug our shoulders and wait for them to either get miserable enough that they leave or for them to work themselves all the way through the disciplinary process. But we can’t adopt that mindset. Will that stuff happen? Sure–it happens everywhere. But our goal has to be first to win them. We should take losing them personally.

The thing is—and whether it’s fair or not—much of this really does fall on what’s commonly referred to as “middle management.” That’s our branch and/or department managers. It’s those managers who generally have the widest reach, given that they likely have the lion’s share of the employees reporting to them. That’s where the rubber meets the road. That’s where much of the day-to-day interactions are going to happen. That’s where much of that magic happens if we’re doing it right. That’s not at all to say that that’s where all the responsibility lies. Not at all. But that is usually the front line.

So we’ve got to step up and own culture in our respective areas. We’ve got to take it personally in a sense. If we’ve got folks struggling in some way (like we all do), we’ve got to figure out how to help them. How to win trust. How to earn respect. How to work through the layers of resistance that have been formed over the months and years.

For example, say you’ve got people coming in late left and right and over and over again for months and months. Maybe you need to ask them why they’re not excited to get to work. Ask yourself why they’re not excited to get to work. How did they get to the point where they felt like it was OK to do that over and over again? Tardiness is just one random thing; it could be a bad attitude, sub par performance,  or some other thing.

It’s a big and tough responsibility, but that’s what we all signed up for when we accepted positions of leadership. We don’t get to just sit back and wait for change to happen on its own. We have to do what it takes to make it happen.

No team’s going to ever get the culture stuff down perfectly, but we can be consistently on the right trajectory. What we can’t do is let stuff snowball for days, weeks, months, and years. When that happens is when you’ll see an organization that’s had the same culture issues in the same spots for years. We’ll all have rough patches—no doubt. But it’s about what we’re doing with our teams when we’re in one of those patches.

It’s on all of us. We’ve got to win them.

 

What I Should Have Said…

October 22, 2012 Uncategorized 4 comments

So how much of the responsibility for employee development lies with the employee?

I don’t recall the specific verbiage that was used, but that was the gist of the question as I remember it. It came in a Q & A session following a talk Andy Janning and I gave about employee development, during which I advocated for employee development to be thought of differently than it often is.

Some version of that question was probably running through the minds of others in the audience after I was fairly direct about some managers’ general apathy toward developing their employees. I had suggested that organizations stop acting like the training department alone owns employee development. On a related note I opined that organizations need to stop holding Training more accountable for employee development than those employees’ managers. I said that we, in organizations, need to stop making it OK if managers aren’t developing their employees, and stop thinking that a manager sending an employee to a training session counts as them developing them that employee. And then, to top it off, I argued that organizations need to stop promoting people into management if they don’t develop people; just being a technical expert isn’t good enough anymore.

I was essentially suggesting that employee development needs to evolve into something more than an effort to create human pegs to stick into organizational holes. It has to become more about creating an environment that it is about creating a program. Employee development has to be a community effort, an organizational way of life that’s owned by everyone.

It was as the dust settled from that talk that the question mentioned above was posed. How much of the responsibility for employee development lies with the employee? I’m inferring—and this is admittedly an assumption—that this thought was perhaps in response to me placing so much emphasis on managers’ responsibility to lead and develop people well. The way I took the question was basically this: You’re hitting managers pretty hard about doing their part to develop employees. But what about the employees? Don’t they bear some burden here too? Again, in fairness, the questioner did not take any sort of unkind tone or adversarial stance. It was a good and fair question. I just think I may have bungled the answer.

I don’t remember exactly how I phrased my response (those bright lights get to you every once in a while, you know?), but I said something along the lines of “both the manager and employee own 100% of the responsibility.” My point of course was that both parties have to be entirely committed to the developmental process.

In retrospect though, and as pointed out by a buddy of mine, maybe I should have responded to that question differently. Maybe I should have reframed both the question and my answer.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone as politically-correct as I did. Maybe I should have just said something more like “Why don’t we act like all of the responsibility is on us as leaders? Why spend time trying to figure out just how much of this thing is on us and how much is on that employee?”

As my friend said, of course there’s some sort of unspoken assumption that some of the responsibility falls on employees, but think about it this way: If you’re the manager of a business unit with a capable and engaged leader above you, would that leader allow you to blame your staff for their lack of development? After all, who’s responsible for the staff you’re managing? Technically speaking, you are, right? You’re who that leader holds accountable for your team’s performance.

So what if we changed our mindset? Why wouldn’t we act like all of the responsibility lies with us as leaders? If people really look at themselves as leaders, wouldn’t they be challenging themselves to continue to develop their team well, regardless of what percentage of their employees’ development is assigned to those employees?

Perhaps a case could be made that as long as managers are allowed to place any of the blame on their teams, they’ll assume they’re not the problem. Let me rephrase that. As long as you and I are allowed to place any of the blame on our teams, we tend to assume we’re not the problem. I had never thought of it exactly like that, but how many times have you heard some version of that? Probably lots.

Honestly, some managers aren’t the problem, and that’s fine; but why shouldn’t we feel the weight of that responsibility whether we think it lies totally with us or not? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? We’re usually quick (often too quick) to take credit for the good stuff our teams do, so why not take ownership of the not-so-good as well?

Why don’t we, as leaders, start asking ourselves where our responsibility is in all this? Not the employees’—ours. It’s our responsibility to lead and develop our employees. We signed up for the gig when we accepted a leadership position. Now we need to own it.

« Older Entries