In my consulting career I have supported many organisations with the development of their people, leaders and cultures and I have seen some amazing practices and ideas brought to life to engage, enable and motivate people. As an external consultant, I also hear lots about the other things that are going on in organisations – the darker sides of companies’ cultures, let’s say.

There are many ways to measure your culture – surveys, pulse-taking, focus groups, team meetings, one-to-ones, good-day-bad-day buttons – but are these things picking up on what’s really going on in your organisation? And if they did, what would you do about it?

I’ve worked in leadership teams where we’ve sat together reviewing the results of an employee engagement intervention and it was, and mostly always is, nerve-wracking. You’re doing your best all year round to ensure people are engaged, however, there’s always something that comes up that could be better, that perhaps makes you think “we should have done a lot more there.”

That is natural, and not many cultures, even the award-winning ones, are perfect. However, when it comes to improving your culture, you should narrow your list down to two or three game-changing items. Positive areas – to make sure these features always strongly stand out within your culture – and negative areas – to make sure you eliminate these from you culture.

Here are three examples of darker sides to cultures that I have seen, and the impacts of those dark sides:

Company A:

• Dark Side: It was okay to change due dates on project milestones and keep the statuses as Green, and there were no consequences for the individuals involved.
• Impact: nothing was really being delivered and external clients were disappointed and going elsewhere for the support they needed.

Company B:

• Dark Side: Experts held on to knowledge. Other people learnt for themselves, with varying degrees of success.
• Impact: People became frustrated at lack of progression and lack of recognition for the effort they’d put into their own performance and development so they left after 18 months and went to companies that supported personal growth. The cost to recruit their replacements was high and the process took another 3 months.

Company C:

• Dark Side: people didn’t believe the leadership team would follow through on commitments and strategic initiatives.
• Impact: people were disengaged. When a new initiative was announced, people thought “so what?” and didn’t put much energy into playing their part in making it successful.

So what can you do if you discover there’s a dark side to your culture? One option is to ignore it and hope it goes away. Good luck with that. Another option is to consider steps like these:

1.      Get it out in the open and find out what’s really going on

Hold your hands up and declare that there’s something going on that really needs to change. Then, find out as much as you can about the issue, why it’s happening, who is involved and affected, what is really going on and the impact it is really having. Also seek to find out what should be going on instead.

There are numerous ways to do this – notice boards, galleries, SharePoint discussions, focus groups, confidential chats. Even anonymous suggestion boxes.

Once you have this information, analyse it thoroughly and determine the causes of the issue.

2.      Paint a picture of the future

People will only change when they know what they’re changing to. Be clear on what success looks like for everyone and what people will be doing, and saying, and hearing and feeling when the picture of the future is achieved. Create a visible plan to achieve these ways of working and agree success factors and ways to measure success.

3.      Take action

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to enhancing cultures. Back to my three examples:

• In Company A, the cause was that nobody really spoke at all about progress and performance, at any level. The effort went into developing leaders, managers and project managers to give effective feedback and coaching, in real-time. Visibility of project plans was also increased and decisions regarding priorities were made more openly. As a result, people felt it was okay to say “I am behind”. When they did, help was given. Long story short, individual and team effectiveness was improved immediately and continues to do so.
• In Company B, lack of time was the big issue. Lack of time for experts to write down or record what they knew, lack of time for people to learn, lack of time for questions to be answered. So the solution was dedicated time. Dedicated time for knowledge sharing where people would create content, share content, solve problems together in a structured and organised fashion. Where did the time come from? The CEO made a bold move and told clients that the business would close at 15:30 every Friday. The remaining 2 hours of every Friday were dedicated to development, without email, telephone and meetings interrupting development activities.
• In Company C, the problem was down to the way decisions and priorities were being communicated. The leadership team took it on the chin and said Sorry, and meant it. Communication on changes to direction and why initiatives were changing or stopping or pausing or continuing were made clear throughout the company. People got it and were more willing to change direction because they understood why.

4.      Measure and Share Progress

This is the part I see least focus on, however this is what matters the most. Lots of organisations implement initiatives then hope the problem is fixed. My advice is to see your plans through properly. Share stories of successful practices and new ways really happening, listen to why things might not be working and offer support to make them work. Measure against your chosen success factors and report progress. And recognise and reward people along the way.

It’s not easy facing up to the dark side of your culture but it could change the game in your organisation. What steps are you taking to find out if your culture has a dark side? And what could it mean for your company if you eliminated these?

I’d love to hear examples of where your company’s dark side has been lit up and how you managed to fix it.  Feel free to comment in the feed or send me a direct message.

Gary.

This article first appeared on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/shining-light-dark-side-your-culture-gary-paterson/