Culture – Turning it from toxic to healthy is everyone’s responsibility
Let’s briefly explain the mechanism of how culture takes roots in a company: The formation of culture, usually, relates back to the owners and the first few people at its start. The people already in the company have the power to influence how the newer people work and behave. Furthermore when the company is expanding the new people that get selected are “similarly minded” people. This is how culture is propagated and the longer it stays unchallenged the harder it becomes.
What is organizational culture? The way we do things in the company, the way we behave, the way we treat others, the way we are treated, the way we cooperate with each other, the way we form our aspirations and our vision, the way different hierarchies live their daily working lives in the company and so on.
When the right culture is not in place, it generates a lot of waste and operational efficiency suffers. Strategically and long-term, we will not succeed in implementing a strategy if a toxic or conflicting culture is installed.
The importance of culture is such that it imposes on every manager and worker an obligation not to leave a bad culture unchallenged to perpetuate. We owe it to ourselves and our organization to make our contribution in the endeavour to correct and improve it.
To do so we must recognize what is a bad, toxic culture. To help make it identifiable and visible, presented below are some of its frequently encountered elements:
Secrecy, lack of communication and feedback, the creation of barriers between those that order and those that must obey resulting to a climate of mistrust, conflict and hate; egotism enhanced by distance of geography or hierarchy; silos serving as a bulwark [...]
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