Of bosses, corporate culture and responsibility
by Miki Saxon
Nerys Wadham, in commenting on the changes in the corner offices at BP and GlaxoSmithKline, says, “…culture perhaps being less about ‘the people’ collectively than the CEO individually. The tone, look and feel of a firm are to a great extent set from the mindset and world view at the top.”
I can’t stress enough how true this is.
It’s the boss’ MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) that creates the form and shape of the corporate culture.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a mom and pop operation, startup or global giant; whether the company has two, two thousand or twenty thousand employees; whether the boss is called owner, founder, president or CEO.
Best Buy’s vaunted ROWE could not have taken root, nor would it have spread throughout the company, without a top boss who enabled the bottom-up culture in the first place, as well as providing the fertilizer that allows ideas to bloom.
It’s not enough to announce the cultural attributes in which you believe, such as no politics, and then ignore political actions because you believe that your senior staff are adults and won’t engage in behavior that goes unrewarded.
Even if you want to manage your culture by benign neglect, people need to know that there are repercussions for actions that flaunt the corporate culture just as there are for actions that violate legal issues such as harassment.
All this is just as true for the individual subcultures that establish themselves around every manager in the company.
Creating and caring for the culture around you should be written into every manager’s job description at every level.
If that bothers you, just remember that culture affects productivity, engagement, innovation and retention.
And if that’s not enough motivation for you to pay attention then stay focused on the MY-CCF mantra—my compensation, my career path, my future.
What do you do abut culture?
Image credit: iwanbeijes CC license
