You could have the very best, well thought out, primed for execution strategy but chances are it’ll get derailed by corporate culture.
Humans are creatures of habit. We have huge numbers of habits that keep us going the way we do. It’s known as the Paradigm and can be considered our operating system. Most people don’t know that they have been programmed to live like they do and therefore go through life on Version 1.0 for the majority of their lives. It’s only when something goes wrong that they change some habits that might net them an incremental increase. It’s like an upgrade to Version 1.0.1.
Gather people together in an organization and they build mass habit or corporate culture. In order for a company to grow the people within the organization have to grow. The thing is that people resist change. All too often managers will say it’s an issue of attitude and therefore cannot make the people change. Try and change something in an organization and great resistance is often encountered.
A company I worked for initiated an assembly line process on a particular product that had, up until then, been assembled at stations by one person per station. The resistance was so great from one individual that the company gave him 3 unpaid days off in hopes of a change in attitude. Rarely do these measures work for extended periods of time.
The best way to create change is to change the culture along with the process. You do that by getting the people in the company to want the change to happen. You get them to look at the habits they have that will hold them back and get them to change the habit to one that will propel them forward. Managers can teach their teams about attitude and what it is so that they can develop a winning attitude. Co-creation is the term used when people are brought together as a team and they create team-oriented goals to achieve. The goal should be in parallel with the company vision. By doing this the people within the team feel valued and energized because they now have something to work toward. Without goals, they’re just working.
65% of a company’s income goes back to wages, benefits, and incentives. What surprises me is that management knows everything about the widgets and sprockets they make and the process, policies, and procedures but know very little about people and attitude. Correcting this is a sure fire way to double the bottom line, if not more.