{"id":11738,"date":"2016-04-18T15:01:01","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T15:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/948294437a.nxcli.io\/?p=11738"},"modified":"2019-03-02T19:35:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T19:35:49","slug":"a-magical-way-to-transform-your-companys-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/2016\/04\/18\/a-magical-way-to-transform-your-companys-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"A Magical Way To Transform Your Company’s Culture?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chasing The Culture Fairy: In Pursuit of a Fully Competent Organization<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Is there really some magical way to transform your company\u2019s culture? It might seem so given how many books being sold and all the companies, product solutions and consultants that promise to be able to do so. This expanding marketplace is not surprising, since I have yet to meet a CEO whose goal was to have a terrible culture exist in their company. It\u2019s like universal attraction to lovely weather \u2013 the people generally most interested in stormy days are the people who sell umbrellas or snow-shovels. It may be the same with today\u2019s business obsession around building a \u201cgreat culture\u201d whereby there are solutions peddlers who strike at the hearts of company leaders \u2013 promising to be\u00a0The Culture Fairy<\/em>\u00a0who will turn grey skies into rainbows.<\/p>\n

\"\"I\u2019m not accusing all those offer to improve business performance by fixing its operating culture of peddling fairy dust. There are plenty of observable issues in organization\u2019s policies and governance, communication, systems and leadership\u2019s effectiveness that can be and should be improved. There are experts who are entirely capable of solving many of these problems \u2013 and plenty of companies that need their help. The problem I see is with the CEO who believes that they can somehow outsource the solution of improving the performance of their employees and their company on the whole\u2013 when the most important and critical place to begin may be with themself. In business, driving performance is a fundamental function of leadership. When leaders are either unwilling or incapable of doing this themselves \u2013it is unlikely that the performance of the organization improve in measurable or meaningful ways. Leadership cannot be outsourced.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem may be that the \u201cculture\u201d is difficult to define. A problem that cannot be defined or effectively measured cannot be solved. We tend of apply a vague community standard to assessing culture: we know a good culture when we see it. But the particulars are not always clear. Is it that employees are happy and they care? Is it that they are motivated and productive? Perhaps a good culture is all of these things. But you can have happy, motivated and productive employees and still have a poorly performing people \u2013 and company. It\u2019s not just that your employees care about their work and the success of the company, it\u2019s whether how\u00a0they demonstrate their caring leads to actually accomplishing whatever is necessary for the company to be successful in its mission. So what is it that actually defines a desirable culture \u2013 and more important \u2013 how do we achieve that in our companies?<\/p>\n

The answer might be that we need to look at cause rather than effect. A high-performing organization \u2013 one where people are fully engaged, fulfilled by their work, rewarded for their accomplishments and supporting the success of the organization \u2013 is a result of how the company operates, the collective performance of all it\u2019s components. And how a company operates falls under the role of leadership.<\/p>\n

The driving force behind performance is competence. If your company is staffed by people fully competent in their roles, if the systems in place competently enhance the ability to effectively and efficiently get what needs to be accomplished done, and if the leadership is competent at orchestrating and driving this level of performance \u2013 it makes sense that the desired results will follow. What I am describing here is a \u201cfully competent organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, what is competence? Like \u201cculture\u201d it is easier to describe incompetence than define what amounts to competence in any given situation or role. Competence or incompetence is experienced as a result or consequence. We get bad service, something is designed poorly or assembled wrong, or we get wrong information from someone who is supposed to assist or advise us. We don\u2019t need to look long or hard. The business world \u2013 and society on the whole \u2013 is mired in incompetence. When we occasionally experience something extraordinary we are surprised. The rest of the time we hope for something simply satisfactory and unremarkable. But is \u201csatisfactory and unremarkable\u201d really signs of competence? I would argue it is definitely not.<\/p>\n

Mediocrity is not the product of genuine competence. We can get by on mediocrity, but companies won\u2019t thrive and civilizations don\u2019t flourish without standards that lean towards extraordinary and demand ever expanding standards of excellence in performance. Ordinary efforts can\u2019t be expected to produce breakthrough solutions, just as conventional thinking tends to only produce conventional results. Even if we employ a rather conventional definition of competence, \u201cthe ability to do something successfully or efficiently\u201d – by today\u2019s standards \u2013 attaining standards of mediocrity is extraordinary and remarkable. Incompetence reigns supreme where competence is not made necessary.<\/p>\n

A better, or at least more useful definition of competence extends beyond knowing what needs to be done \u2013 to knowing how to best accomplish it. Skill and ability alone are not enough. We can see this in underperforming students and athletes \u2013 who have enormous natural talent \u2013 but never devote themselves to developing it \u2013 and are easily overtaken by those with more average talent who commit themselves to constantly challenging their perceived constraints.<\/p>\n

I prefer the definition provided on BusinessDictionary.com: \u201cA cluster\u00a0of related abilities, commitments, knowledge, and skills \u00a0that enable a person (or an organization) to act\u00a0effectively in a job or situation.\u201d This speaks to those intangibles that must be engaged in order to fully realize the potential of our skills and talents. Knowledge \u2013 the result of learning, and commitments \u2013 derived from our values are both critical factors to real competence and the capacity to drive real accomplishment. It speaks more to efficacy: the connection of accomplishments to a stated purpose. Efficacy can only exist in a condition of curiosity that challenges assumptions of what is or isn\u2019t possible, and a commitment to pursue discovery and results when it is often challenging and uncomfortable to do so.<\/p>\n

Observing people in the workplace, you could form a seemingly reasonable assumption that most people are inherently lazy. As managers or bosses \u2013 we need to police the workplace \u2013 to protect the company from those who slack-off \u2013 and protect our \u201cgood\u201d employees from being affected \u2013 or infected \u2013 by poor performers. There is a well-founded belief that tolerating poor performance in some will have a negative impact on the work of those who perform at a high level. This is the basis of the suggestion that as a leaders \u2013 \u2018what you tolerate is viewed as what your endorse.\u2019<\/p>\n

The issue might not be employee\u2019s attitudes, it could be their competence \u2013 or lack thereof. Given the opportunity \u2013 most people tend to gravitate towards the things they are most competent at doing. It just makes sense that we feel good when we can accomplish things \u2013 and moreover \u2013 we don\u2019t feel good when we are struggling. It may be hard to have a good attitude when we are struggling at what we do for lack of competence.<\/p>\n

This is where conscientiousness comes into play. A competent con artist, murderer \u2013 or even slacker will lean towards their competencies. In the workplace there are people who are masters at accomplishing nothing \u2013 and pride themselves in getting paid for beating the system. Conscientiousness speaks to an inner sense of what\u2019s right or principled. With the exception of those who are pathologically criminal and have no conscience\u2013 those whose intentions are evil or greedy by expedience will sometimes benefit from seeing how their competencies can be redirected to a greater cause \u2013 or to serve the greater good. (Computer-hackers who get caught and then are asked to become high level security consultants are a good example.) Conscientiousness also speaks to the inner desire to struggle through whatever it may take to become fully competent at anything. We might call this emotional intelligence \u2013 or the ability to defer gratification \u2013 but this is actually driven by our beliefs and values beyond our ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills \u2013 which is the basic definition of intelligence.<\/p>\n

Competent people are made \u2013 not born. We are born with the competencies to be a successful newborn. We cry for attention, inure affection and coo and we latch-on to feed, but we are not born with the competencies required for being a successful adult. We might be clever or cunning and become accidentally successful \u2013 or we might stumble through life aimlessly and want of purpose or even the means to survive on our own. Basic skills can often be found within our current means \u2013 but real competence is developed and requires some intention to do so.<\/p>\n

Competent people by their nature tend to be naturally motivated by their dissatisfaction with mediocrity and the status quo. They are internally driven to make themselves and things they encounter better. They are innately happier given the satisfaction of accomplishment, personal growth and of performing at a high level. Competence speaks to being productive human beings.<\/p>\n

This is why what we tend to look for when we imagine the culture we aspire to have \u2013 is really a demand for competence. A fully competent organization \u2013 one with competent people, competent systems and competent leadership is the cause of what most people think of as being an ideal company culture. We might hope that The Culture Fairy would transform our organizations for the good of performance \u2013 but wishful thinking is not what creates competence. It begins with competent leadership and the ability to develop competent people and competent organizations. If you are interested in some insight into what it takes to build and grow sustainable, fully competent organizations \u201cThe Competent Organization\u201d by Lee Thayer is a good place to begin. Getting there, though, is a rigorous journey. It requires learning how to think in order to learn how to become the kind of leader who can do all that is necessary to build a fully competent organization in order to attain the kind of high performance that few companies ever succeed in achieving. Is it worth the effort? If you believe, as I do that those who lead successful businesses are the force behind the social, economic and cultural gains in society \u2013 the answer is yes. If you, instead, believe that you can simply leave it to others to resolve the problems of the world, or that\u00a0The Culture Fairy<\/em>\u00a0and the like will save the day \u2013 you might want to think again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chasing The Culture Fairy: In Pursuit of a Fully Competent Organization Is there really some magical way to transform your company\u2019s culture? It might seem so given how many books being sold and all the companies, product solutions and consultants that promise to be able to do so. This expanding marketplace is not surprising, since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11740,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11738\/revisions\/11740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}