Do you have plenty of money in the bank and feel secure in your leadership role? Were I sitting before you right now, would you be tempted to tell me that you don't care what people think as long as they come in and do the job every day?
The reason I ask, is that I get this a lot. Leaders invite me to come in and chat with them (nobody does this unless there's a need to be fulfilled and they're looking to meet it) and then tell me, completely unsolicited, that they're comfortably off and very disinterested in finding out 'what the company thinks of itself'. This is such a regular occurrence that I've become curious as to how these people really feel, where their pain threshold is and why they want to talk to me in the first place.
Oh, and another thing they invariably tell me, having now established that People are recognisably their greatest asset, is how many millions they spent on machinery in the last couple of years.
So what's hurting, then? If these leaders don't want to know what's going on in their culture, how can they profess to care about it at all? Bringing me in just to tell me these things is like taking your pet to the vet and then leaving it there.
If you're still reading, you're most likely interested in finding those pain points and discovering how to alleviate them. Even if you're hardened to the idea of empathy, some part of you knows instinctively that if employees are suffering, the profitability of your enterprise suffers, too. In an ideal world, everyone would prioritise humanity over fiscality, but we live in the real world and just have to deal with it. Maslow's Hierarchy still applies.
Symptoms of cultural dysfunction (distress, emotional starvation, abandonment, fear) are;
Disconnection. People put their heads down when you walk by. Communications seem confused. Co-operation doesn't happen.
Despair. They may try to point out difficulties but nothing is done. They may start taking time off, missing targets and leaving jobs unfinished.
Disillusionment. Objects get left lying around, people seem to stop caring about the environment or workload. Housekeeping deteriorates.
If you took these symptoms to Triage, you would probably find;
Resentful scuttlebutt. This can come from any quarter, and reveals itself in what people talk about out of earshot. People need outlets for their versions of pain.
Loss of productivity and quality control. Ceasing to care what anyone thinks (listen for the echo, folks), people stop giving their best and do as little as they can.
High turnover. People don't like toxic cultures, so they look for greener pastures.
Causes can be found in;
Betrayal. A line manager may be cherry-picking people's ideas and putting them forward as his own. He (or She, but usually it's a He in engineering) may also be resource-guarding, a common cause of confusion in communications.
Belittlement. They may feel left out of the value equation when yet another shiny new machine comes into the works. The language used in the workplace may put them down on a daily basis. How people are treated affects performance.
Baseline mentality. Everything seems to be someone else's job since nobody wants to take responsibility for anything beyond the basics of what you pay them for.
Blame. A familiar cultural issue bandied about for decades, Blame comes from all quarters and is an easy (but damaging) shift of focus from a problem to a person.
We can call this the B-List and tackle it strategically.
What that strategy actually looks like is going to be a major operation, so get your heads together and invite me along for a meaningful diagnostic and a constructive conversation.
I'm here to help, to change people's lives, to make the workplace a great place to be, to lift the spirit of your enterprise and set it on course for excellence. Sometimes we really have to question ourselves... please, don't let your people suffer any longer. It's costing you all far too much. If you want to know the fiscal figures, they're here. If somewhere in your heart there is a will to set them free [from pain], you know what to do. Do it now.
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