Too many CEOs and other leaders are asleep when it comes to corporate culture.
Because culture seems like a soft and squishy topic, they don't focus on it. They don't pay attention to it. They pay attention to 'hard' things like dollars in and dollars out, and obviously these things are critical.
What too many leaders miss is that without the right culture, the dollars won't keep flowing in the door. Good people will get disgusted and leave. Unfortunately, I have seen it happen dozens of times.
Misguided management decisions that affect employees and the working environment in general can have disastrous effects. When an organization enacts too many harsh and restrictive policies and procedures, it can destroy a corporate culture. Once your culture is broken, it is much harder to fix it than simply to avoid breaking it in the first place!
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It is easy to lead with a human voice. It is our natural mode, if we haven't drunk too much toxic lemonade to be able to remember what our native mode is. It is normal to treat people well and to be friendly and human with them. It's what any group of people would naturally do when they come together to accomplish something great.
It is more fun and less stressful to be human at work, but there's a catch.
Here's the catch: when you operate as a human leader, you can't enact stupid new policies every time you feel like it.
You have to take a deep breath, and take the long view. You have to consider the impact of your idea on your culture. You have to ask people what they think about the management decision you have in mind.
You are the boss, so you can act in haste -- but then you have to live with the consequences! As we know, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When leaders decide to put new rules and policies in place, they've got to be ready for the inevitable backlash. Maybe they will be able to perceive the backlash right away -- or maybe it will go unnoticed, while your formerly-awesome corporate culture fades away.
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Here are 10 management decisions that destroy cultures and drive away talented people.
1. The decision to rank and rate your employees, one against the other.
2. The decision to implement 360-degree feedback that encourages (or even compels) employees to give anonymous feedback to one another.
3. The decision to require employees who want to transfer internally to get their current manager's permission first.
4. The decision to require employees to bring in written proof (like a funeral notice) when a family member dies, in order to get paid for their bereavement leave.
5. The decision to count every tiny absence from work (even a 30-minute errand) against employees.
6. The decision to note and document "infractions" instead of reinforcing and recognizing triumphs.
7. The decision to fill positions with external hires when there are willing and competent people already on your team.
8. The decision to make your HR department a rule-enforcement team instead of a culture-building, problem-solving team.
9. The decision to hire people in at less than the market rate for their positions, to save money.
10. The decision to run your company "by the book" instead of by listening to the brilliant people you've hired.
Forced or stack ranking was at its height during the 1990s, but it is still prevalent now. Luckily, more and more companies are getting rid of performance-evaluation systems that rank employees against one another.
It is a gruesome, pointless process whose only purpose ever was to keep employees wondering about where they stand in the made-up organizational pecking order. Stack ranking has no business benefits and is a culture-killing process that can only hurt your organization.
Three-sixty-degree feedback systems were also popular in the 1990s, but time has shown them to be useless as a management tool. How can we hope to build community at work when we've got our employees filling out secret forms to share their impressions of one another? To build trust, we need to get our employees talking frankly and compassionately about their feelings. We'll never do that by filling out anonymous surveys!
If you want your best employees to leave your company, a great way to shove them out the door is to give their manager control over their career process. Too many managers can't see the benefits of allowing a great employee to move up or sideways, so they'll say "No, you can't transfer -- I won't approve it" and then the talented employee will run straight into your competitor's arms!
There is no more heinous HR policy than the one that requires employees to prove that a loved one died, in the form of a funeral notice handed in to HR. The death of a family member is a life event that should be respected above the demands of a fear-based policy.
Maybe back in 1987 some employee fabricated a family member's death. So what? To treat every employee with such a deep level of disrespect because once upon a time, somebody ripped off the company for three days of pay is an insult to your team.
You do not legally owe your employees a career advancement path in your company, but it's obvious that if smart people are thwarted in their attempts to grow with your organization, they'll leave. Beyond that, you'll get a reputation as a place where the managers like external candidates better than they like their own employees. What does that say about your managers?
The HR department is a critical piece of any effort to humanize your workplace. They can be sounding boards for your employees and can jump on emerging communication and culture issues quickly to resolve them -- but only if they are empowered to do those things!
If your HR department is still pushing forms around and if your vision for HR is that its goal is to keep your company out of court, you have set your HR team and yourself up to fail.
If you hire people below the market rate to save a few bucks, you will end up losing talent, customers, and perhaps your business. Valuable things cost money, including the invaluable talents of the brilliant people you employ. There are lots of good ways to save money in business, but underpaying employees is not one of them.
You can run your business "by the book" and with one eye always on the yardsticks on the wall. Plenty of employers do just that. You can obsess about metrics and never budge on any policy when it would benefit an employee to do so.
You can keep complete control of your workplace, but that would be foolish because it would squander and depress the most important ingredient for your success.
What is that ingredient? It is the passion and commitment of your team! That's the energy you need to build up. Culture is the biggest determinant of your success or failure. Should you spend a little time focusing on your culture right now?
