My definition of workplace culture is “The patterns or agreements that determine how the business operates.” A simplified version that I commonly use is: “It’s how things work around here”.
The first step on The Culture Disruptor is to Diagnose what’s really going. • The second step on The Culture Disruptor is to Reframe the roles. • The third step on The Culture Disruptor is to Break the patterns. • The fourth step on The Culture Disruptor is to Consolidate the gains.
“Culture is how things work around here or how the place functions. It affects every aspect of your business, from how you develop solutions to how you sell your products or services to how you make your customers happy. It’s all about patterns of thinking and relating that tell people how to behave in an organization. And these patterns start to take hold the first day that people walk into the workplace.” “I
Mental Maps: The perceptions, point-of-view, and images you hold in your head about your work. • Roles: The part played by a person (or function) in a given situation. • Patterns: The (often hidden) agreements and cocreated rules between the parts.
There are good companies and bad companies, good cultures and bad cultures, good workplaces and bad workplaces, but one rule always applies: Every company, every culture, and every workplace must deliver the business results an organization needs in order to keep its workforce employed, its customers delighted, and its community well served. You don’t change your culture for the sake of change, you change it to meet your business needs. That may seem excruciatingly obvious, but leaders can fail to make that connection.
Look at the accountability pattern that emerges if you redefine your role as a performance manager, who gives achievers feedback and holds them to account for performance outcomes”
Never underestimate your power to change the culture, simply by changing your behavior.