Is Our Organisational Culture
Healthy or….? | Commentary by Christeen Akkarawatte
When I was an intern here at Orchan, the entire
team would gather together to brainstorm on how we could implement an effective
campaign strategy. It didn’t matter whether I was an intern, or if it was my
last day; what did matter is that all our voices were heard. There is this safe
space where we can learn from each other and come up with some great ideas,
together.
A positive organisation culture would have
transparency, where feedback is a norm and growing together is important. What
you would not need is a lot of office politics and unmotivated employees. But
then, unmotivated employees would also be a sign of a negative organisational
culture.
Organisational culture is fundamental to an
organisation. You give your employees the freedom to innovate and pitch in
their ideas - where there is a nice flow of ideas and everyone’s involved.
Forming relationships like this would reflect beautifully from the outside.
However, what if our culture is actually quite
grey and we need to streamline it? Avi Gunzburg discusses how rare ‘culture
coaching’ can be and asks his readers’ input on the topic. We all could find
the how-to’s of organisational
culture but how can we do it?
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Culture Coach? Coaching
Culture? Both? Um....Help?
Everyone is talking about culture. How
important it is, how to do it, how to accomplish it, etc. There are books and
articles galore on it - The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Zappos book Delivering
Happiness, Fish, as well as so many others it is hard to keep track. However
something that seems to be missing from the business scene is real, in person,
or online training programs on how to live and breathe culture. In addition, by
the amount that everyone is talking about it there would be culture coaches or consultants
that are hired into a business and work together with the business to
accomplish lasting and sustainable culture change.
There currently exists every other type of
coach and training program out there - leadership, executive, 360 reviews,
sales, management, but nothing (that I could find at least) available in the
coach arena or training program on culture. To be clear programs exist on how
to build a "coaching culture" within your business - but that is assuming that you
already have a relatively healthy culture in your business in the first place.
Just imagine, your culture sucks, everyone is miserable, and you walk in and
announce "we just hired Bob the Business Coach to teach us how to have a
"coaching culture" and we are going to pay him a gazillion dollars to
do so. Great!" Um.....No. That would not work. That is a great way to
murder your company culture. As I said a "coaching culture" inside of
a business requires you to already have a decent culture and only be looking to
improve it.
So what are us regular business folks to do? We
want a better or best business culture (because lets be honest, everyone wants
to enjoy where they work) but how can we go about getting it? Obviously we can
always read about it. However a lot of us with cultures that are lacking want
more. We want more "in the mud" training. More "rolling up your
sleeves" and "digging in work" on this. We want real and
sustainable change (FYI that usually does not come from a book) to create a business
culture that will make the next Jim Collins (Good to Great) book.
In my never stopping brain I do have a vault of
information on what makes crappy company cultures better and what makes good
company cultures great. However that is fodder for another article (hint, hint
it starts with you). In the meantime I wonder what you think about this seeming
hole in the training and coaching marketplace. Do you feel that there is a need
for culture training programs, consultants, and coaches?
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