Managers, Micro Cultures And Values
by Miki Saxon
Note: It’s imperative to recognize that culture has nothing to do with perks, such as free food, fancy offices, free services, etc.
Culture is about values and how they play out in both the internal and external functioning of the company.
But company culture isn’t the end game — micro cultures are.
Micro cultures are based on individual bosses’ values.
Both cultures are fundamental to that perennially popular subject, employee engagement.
HBS’ Jim Heskett recently asked his audience what’s needed to engender employee engagement given that engaged employees are 2.7% more productive.
Most of the responses talked about the need for managers to respect their people, listen to ideas from everyone, have better people skills, etc., and several mentioned the skills acquired with an MBA.
But, as I pointed out, and Heskett cited in his summary, “Respect and valuing employee input have little to do with education and much to do with personal values.”
Unfortunately, education is no guarantee of values.
Colleges are no different, with MBA students leading the pack. “56 percent of MBA students admitted to cheating… In 1997, McCabe did a survey in which 84 percent of undergraduate business students admitted cheating versus 72 percent of engineering students and 66 percent of all students. In a 1964 survey by Columbia University, 66 percent of business students surveyed at 99 campuses said they cheated at least once.”
If scholastic success was based on cheating it’s likely that that lack of respect/get-ahead-at-all-costs mentality would carry over to their management style.
Yesterday’s post ended with this comment,
That [provide an environment in which people can learn, grow and excel] is what a good boss is supposed to do.
But it’s the great ones who actually do it.
In fact, they go beyond that and shelter their people from any kind of toxic culture coming down from above.
Image credit: thinkpublic
