Culture is on everyone’s mind these days. Starting with Lou Gerstner’s cultural turn around at IBM; Jeff Immelt over at GE working to change from a quantitative, Six Sigma culture to an innovative one; steelmaker Nucor built a culture that is fostering it’s success in one of the toughest businesses around; and, most importantly, innovative companies are learning to appreciate failure in order to innovate.

What’s the common thread? Is there one single thing that holds companies back from building successful cultures that juice innovation, spark creativity and empower their employees/customers/investors?

You bet there is: fear! Fear of being dumped/demoted; fear of being laughed at; fear of what bosses/employees/customers/investors will say when they have the chance; fear of being fired; and all of these fears boil down to one basic belief: the messenger will be killed.

The idea that the bearer of bad news should not be blamed dates back to Sophocles in 442 B.C. and has been reiterated often in the intervening years—obviously, without success, since it’s still an active, though unstated, policy for too many companies and/or managers.

Understanding the problem (why the messenger shouldn’t be blamed) and the solution (why this attitude needs to be in the cultural DNA) isn’t rocket science, so why is it so difficult to make happen?

Tune in tomorrow for ideas and approaches on how to kill the fear—not the messenger!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 10th, 2006 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Business info, Communication, Culture, Hiring, Motivation, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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