Companies refer to their values and PowerPoint slides as keystone for the culture they want to create. But, that is not how cultures are created, cultures are defined as the set of behaviors regularly observed in an organization.
Do people arrive late or early? Are people empowered to make decisions or decisions are centralized? How we actually behave towards customers, employees and suppliers set the culture.
Cultures are set by the basic mechanism of: “Model Behaviors“
How does the boss behave, what makes her happy? Brains respond to authority and hierarchy, especially if the situation is high stress which turns off critical thinking.
When our culture is hierarchical in nature, narrative becomes more important than facts and data. Pleasing superiors is THE way of advancing in career so people saying “yes” to leaders and not questioning, move up the hierarchy faster independent of results achieved.
Human Resources can’t do anything about it because they are part of the hierarchy themselves.
All sorts of biases and fallacies are committed to keep the hierarchy working and escalating on it, but the most damaging situation is that information and material flow is disrupted due to the way decisions are made, information is presented and batched in front of steering committees that only meet once a month or once a quarter. Soon the organization stops moving at the pace of customer’s requirements.
Every time we discuss culture, to our surprise, everybody knows it, but no one acts on it.
– “It is what it is”
– “We are paid for complexity”
– “Politics is part of the job”
Those are typical answers. Because we are social creatures, we are subject to social pressure.
People just adapt to whatever is going on.
How do you know you have a predominantly hierarchical culture?
Here are some of the symptoms and operating assumptions of a hierarchical culture:
1. There is unplanned attrition and burn out is evident, despite offering competitive salaries and benefits including mental health support.
2. All important operational decisions are made at the Executive Leadership Team level or above, they are secret, have code names and are all about implementing stuff, buying stuff (opening facilities, services or products), or cutting cost (layoffs, closing facilities, etc.)
3. Customers and suppliers are seen as dumb and must be educated by the company. We don’t have to listen to them, they have to listen to ‘us’. Customers and suppliers are there to make profit from them.
4. Leaders spend more time in meeting rooms talking to other leaders rather than spending time where work actually happens with the people who are doing the work. The speed of decisions is lagging relative to customer needs and wants. Expediting is how most problems are addressed. Problem solving through expediting is an example of a systemic issue.
5. Form is more important than function. Everything needs to be pretty and according to leader’s wishes. Pleasing is more important than dialogue and customer feedback. If you need to deliver results, the process is not changed, the documentation is changed.
Companies call their culture (the observable set of behaviors in their employees) their secret sauce, and their secret sauce might just be the problem.
We help companies address culture to foster critical thinking and collaboration, using proven principles for problem solving and decision making.
