On the absurdity of "defining" a desired culture
I was reflecting over the weekend on the curious ritual that is commonplace when new CEOs take over. Most will instinctively default to the position that “culture change” is required to fix the problems that led to the last CEO being ousted.
A culture change consultant of some variety (most are complete charlatans) will be called upon to facilitate an away day during which the executive team will bemoan the:
Lack of accountability
Slowness to make decisions
Difficulty in getting teams to collaborate
Poor leadership behaviours in middle management
Over-reliance on senior leaders
blah, blah, blah
Somewhat ironically, they hardly ever examine their culpability in creating an organisational system where these outcomes were entirely predictable.
Instead, they will “define” a new set of behaviours that describe the high-performing “new culture” they intend to create. The HR team will then produce behavioural frameworks and change the performance appraisals and promotion criteria to incorporate mandatory sections where employees must “evidence” these behaviours to be considered high-performing. Many top-down communications will be issued about the new behaviours.
And strangely, this all seems perfectly rational. Logical. Sensible even.
But let’s take a look from another perspective. Imagine you went on a weekend trip with some close friends. After a few drinks, you all sat around a flip chart and defined your ideal partner and their behaviours.
On your return home, you sat down with your actual partner and explained to them that:
You had decided to define the ideal partner you desired, and your friends had helped in articulating how you now expected your partner to behave in your relationship.
They would be judged going forward on how they demonstrated their adherence to the new behaviours, rewarded for behaving as desired, or penalised for failing to exhibit those behaviours.
Ultimately, they were only welcome to stay in the relationship if they accepted these behavioural demands.
I’m pretty sure the response would be along the lines of “Go f!*k yourself. I’m not a child. You can’t tell me how to behave. We’re done.”
I doubt if anyone would be crazy enough to try this. However, we somehow think this makes sense at work. Why is this?
More on corporate culture: the new witchcraft here:
For the whole story on nonsense at corporate bullshit at work see:
Magnetic Nonsense: A Short History of Bullshit at Work and How to Make it Go Away
Why is this?
Paycheck.
We comply openly (acting) with the new paradigm then go about our business in the usual natural way we work.
I would argue the value hasn't caused anything. A series of practical changes to processes, policies, KPIs, remuneration etc which might be grouped under the banner of "innovation" are what's caused the change (if there has indeed been one).
Much of the time, organisations proclaim one value while making the relevant behaviours really hard to do and incentivising people to do the opposite.