Sustaining culture
by Miki SaxonI had a call this morning about Cultural teeth from the CEO of a two-year-old company. He was looking for a way to define the teeth that would sustain his company’s culture, because he already saw it slipping away. He wanted a term, something that would act as bullets in a conversation and would also work when written.
I suggested he use the same term I use—Infrastructure Building Block or IBB.
I explained that IBBs must be implemented from the top, and then supported by the senior staff on down, but what he needed to keep uppermost in his mind was to lead by example. Managers are people and people do as you do, not as you say.
IBBs fall in three categories: philosophy, attitude/style, and policy—involving process, so use it with a light hand to avoid it turning into bureaucracy.
I also suggested that he concentrate on eliminating whatever negatives he’s noticed.
Interestingly, when a company actively eliminates negatives, positives rush in to fill the void. Even better, by concentrating on eliminating negatives you create a flexible framework so that your culture can grow and change as your company grows and changes.
But to eliminate negatives takes more than lip-service. It’s not enough for the CEO to say, “I hate politics!” to eliminate politics. It is necessary to have infrastructure in place that short-circuits politics at its inception—not at some future time when it’s well entrenched and causing havoc.
In other words, IBBs.
