Corporate Cultures And Our Ability To Influence Change
In June of this year I will have been working at the same company for 12 years. Working for the same company that long these days is almost unheard of but I consider myself fortunate to be 31 years old and almost half way to being pension eligible (yes those things do still exist). Barring any unforseen circumstances, I'll probably be at this company my entire career. But that's a discussion for another day.
Throughout these 12 years I've worked with many folks. A handful of which I can say have honestly say have influenced my life and career in a very positive way. I dare even say I'd consider these folks 'friends'. I was talking to one such person yesterday and she brought up the topic of our organization's 'culture'. You see, we've both worked in our current organization a long time - her even longer than I. Throughout that time we've seen people come and go - while others remain. One constant (as is with any company) has been the 'complainer' or the eternal pessimist.
You know the type. The one who always has something negative to say. No matter how you word something (be it a data request, project specifications, methods and procedures, etc) they will always find the negative.
Some of there favorite ways to begin a conversation:
- "Do you know how busy I am...
- "If you want me to do this, then...
Over the years I've come to adjust my reaction to such folks. I've learned not to take their negativity personally. I've even learned to phrase certain things more 'politically correct' (man I hate that term) and that has had a noticable, albeit minimal, impact on such reactions.
On a side note. Isn't it amazing how bold some folks can be when the communication medium is email or IM? When confronted face-to-face or even over the phone, most of those same folks will become calm, rational and sometimes even apologetic when confronted with the reality of their behavior.
So anyways...back to the point of my writing. In 12 years I've come to feel like there is nothing I can do to influence mass cultural change. I've tried many different techniques, but feel like there is no way to influence a wholesale mass change. I've also yet to come across an executive or high level manager that can do this. Sure, results can be improved (by results I mean objectives - hard and fast numbers) and productivity increased. But wholesale postive cultural change is a thing of legend to me. Sadly, history shows us the leaders who have been most successful in doing this have all influenced change in an extremely negative way (think cult leaders, political leaders, etc).
So why can't it be done in a positive way that leads folks to be 'happy'? Why can't folks be content in the fact that they are contributing to the bottom line? There are obvious reasons: perceived unequal compensation, lack of personal enjoyment in the work that the person is performing - the list goes on and on.
I'm not sure what my point is with this post. Maybe it's just a knee jerk reaction to the conversation I had with my friend yesterday combined with an immediate handful of examples that reinforced her point that our organization is in need of serious 'culture reform'. I want to make a difference. I'm just running out of ideas.
RSS
I was a manager for almost 400 EMS workers and there were more than a fair share of complainers. I used to describe them this way:
If I gave them $20,000.00 in small, unmarked, non-sequential bills in a paper bag, they would complain about the bag.
One thing I used to do was if anyone came to me with a 'complaint' they needed to come with at least 1 possible solution, if not, I put them in charge of a committee to come up with a solution.
It did not cut down a whole lot on the complaining, but we did get a lot of great ideas.
I often would sit back and look around cubeville and just wonder how many wasted cell phone minutes the company collected and threw away on company culture alone.
DK