Improving Corporate Culture
We recently had to sit through a meeting where a senior exec went through our groups anonymous ‘pulse’ type survey results. The purpose was for the exec to get feedback on how to increase scores for next time. It was a bit cringy and awkward. Sadly its not the first time this has happened - we did the same thing 6 months before and gave a bunch of suggestions, and to senior managements credit they did implement a lot of the suggestions, however the pulse score didn’t improve. But we gave all our ideas already - we’re out of ideas this time! What do you think is important to create an engaging, positive environment where people would recommend working at the company to their friends? Have you ever seen company culture improve or regress? Is improving culture for a big org an impossible task?
The answer is probably obvious for each situation. Fixing the problem is usually hard. To avoid being accused of doing nothing a crappy leader will endlessly ask for more details. Now they can say they have an 'open dialogue' or they are 'addressing feedback'.
Indeed
We’re a pretty small shop, new CEO comes in, tells us he doesn’t want to affect our culture. Immediately starts complaining about happy hour, Thursday lunch, why out Holiday party is in December and not in January like Sales, cuts the budget for our summer party. 3 years later, he’s still here... I’ve allied with other SLT members that also don’t like him but it’s not been a fun ride. On the flip side, I’m one of the very few that hasn’t left or gotten laid off with a decade of tribal knowledge so I’m in a good position. We just call our CEO Trump now.
Sounds bad. What’s made you stick around? I usually find bad leaders don’t last more than a year or two. Their bosses catch on and let them go. Can do a lot of damage in that time though
The work is constantly challenging and there have been fairly regular financial perks to keep me here. He won’t be here much longer, the rest of the C’s have done a great job of shielding people like me from the BS. I am looking but haven’t found the right gig yet.
None of these things help improve the culture. Sure more WFH is nice in general if you want it and better 401k is nice but it’s not cultural. The questions need to better probe to figure out why people want these things and fix those problems. Why do people want to work from home? What’s causing people to have poor WLB? Etc. those are the questions they should be polling to discover.
Read the just-released book by Ben Horowitz. Culture is not 401k, healthcare, or wfh.
Pay, more money, promotion. WTF is feeling valued. Is this work or therapy?
Need more options in the poll.
Any suggestions?