Why the Chief Executive should lead the enrichment of culture.
.
Financial results depend upon staff’s sense of purpose, performance, motivation and the intelligent use of their capabilities. All of these are determined by the prevailing culture in the organisation.
The Chief Executive has potentially the greatest influence on the quality of the entire organisations culture. This is because in any working day, they and their leadership team set the example of what is deemed best practice in terms of communication and people leadership. It is their example that sets the standards that will be role modelled, for good or ill, by the rest of the organisation.
Therefore, it is largely pointless to introduce new practices and skills at a lower level of management only for them to be subsequently unwittingly undermined by the senior management team.
Research by our team over several decades has clearly uncovered the set of skills that are required to enrich the cultures of organisations. These are the skills that the Chief Executive and senior management must enhance in order to enrich their organisation’s culture. When the senior management team experience the Chief Executive using the Human Needs skills of culture enrichment with them, this improves the quality of their interactions and leads to more effective decision making.
It is this experience that encourages them in turn to become committed to using the Human Needs ideas and skills themselves and to support their use throughout the business. Without people experiencing the Chief Executive using the ideas and skills the benefits gained, whilst still significant, will be confined to isolated areas.
An exception to the above can occur with larger organisations that have a number of divisions. In these cases it can then be possible to work with the leadership of a specific division to bring about culture enrichment for that division. In such cases it is not unusual that when the success that the division achieves from using the Human Needs ideas and skills is recognised, other divisions also seek to learn the culture enrichment program for themselves.
It is vital then, that the Chief Executive or division leader is the first to enhance their skills of enriching culture in order to ensure that the newly enriched culture spreads throughout the division or organisation.
Keeping this in mind, the initial step in the culture enrichment process is to develop a working relationship between Human Needs and the Chief Executive or division leader as appropriate.
To do this Human Needs engages with them so that they have a direct experience of using some of the ideas and skills to more effectively deal with some of their immediate challenges and/or opportunities.
Caveat emptor
When it comes to culture change it really is a case of caveat emptor. When you read the literature and study the websites of a lot of organisations claiming to have expertise in culture change it unfortunately becomes apparent that their use of flowery and abstract language hides the absence of any clear concrete definition of what culture involves and the specific skills that have to be taught to bring about sustainable culture enrichment. This does not just involve a waste of money for organisations’ investing in this bogus ‘expertise’ but it is likely to result in damage to the existing culture and the people within it. With Human Needs this cannot take place as we only work with real work place issues and teach the practical skills of resolving them.
The danger of promoting company values!
The CEO and Senior Management team need to be aware of the danger of promoting company values.
What often happens is that companies put up a list of genuine values that they sincerely believe will enrich the culture of their organisation. However, this is done without equipping the people in the organisation with the real skills that are required to enact these values on a day to day basis.
These values then become mere window dressing, as people feel frustrated by the perceived inability of their mangers, colleagues and themselves to deliver on them. This gives rise to both customers and staff becoming cynical about the values and thus damaging the culture rather than actually enriching it as originally intended.
This problem occurs because of a common error in human thinking which arises when people believe in certain values and then go on to make the unwarranted assumption that they are able to work automatically from them i.e. live the values. This does not happen in reality.
To work from values the underlying HN skills must firstly be identified and secondly the people need to be taught those skills and then practice them in their day to day work. The teaching and use of these skills (that equips people to live the values) also makes a value contribution to the business and stakeholders needs, thus avoiding the danger of both staff and customers becoming cynical about the values of the company.
It is only when the CEO and the leadership team equip people with the concrete skills necessary, that the values can be lived by those who believe in them and want to support them in the organisation. This is a key part of the work the CEO must do in leading the culture enrichment.