Cultural Passion
by Miki SaxonYesterday I explained why I don’t like the term cult culture, although I agree that culture is the tao of (in today’s buzz words) employee engagement.
But I’ve always believed that if you reject an idea it’s your responsibility to offer up something else and I have just the thing.
Cultural Passion.
When you harness people’s passion you have a tiger by the tail. Passion drives creativity, innovation, productivity, retention and a host of other desired behaviors.
But you can’t request passion from your people nor wheedle or cajole and you certainly can’t order people to be passionate.
To enjoy the benefits of passion you must first build a culture that stimulates it; as people grow to trust the culture their passion will grow.
Creating a culture of passion where it doesn’t exist is a long-term project, not only do you need to identify and change various parts of the current culture you need to rebuild trust with a workforce that may have been badly burned previously.
Creating one in a startup is easier, because you start with a clean slate.
However, in both instances, it is imperative to make your culture a filter through which any new hire, especially managers, no matter how senior, must pass.
Whether a startup or giant enterprise, it is cultural passion that makes the impossible improbable and the improbable likely.
Image credit: It’s Holly on flickr
