Saturday, July 25, 2015

Can Your Culture Help People Become WHO They Are?

Being humans, we should have one big advantage - knowing about our own nature.

There are many different perspectives of culture presented along with diverse ways and means of dealing with it. At high-mature digital organizations, culture management, talent management, and performance management have been integrated into a holistic people management approach. What's your culture readiness, how shall you assess culture? Is one of the goals of building a great culture about whether your culture can help people become who they are, to create synergy and accomplish the business purpose?  


Culture is the collective minds, values, attitudes, habits, and your business brand. Culture is the way how we think and does things around here, but HOW you do what you do is a result of your culture - WHO you are. The definition of culture is 'The Mindsets, Attitudes, Feelings, Values, and Behaviors that characterize and inform a group and its members' - but ultimately it is WHO you are and not What you do or HOW you do it. Culture is the aggregate of all employees' mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors. As such, it changes constantly as events happen and people come and go. It's not something that can be manually controlled by the employer, but culture can be changed, or even well designed, the right set of principles and rules can enable and constrain culture. Your culture guides and informs How you do What you do, and should point you to WHY you do it. Your brand and your success all come from your people.


Successful culture change helps people become who they are: By encouraging people to focus on who they are and pursue the purpose discovery, autonomy, and mastery, the great culture catalyzes positive mind, attitude, and behaviors; but discourages the negativity and unprofessionalism.  At the conversations about culture, we need to remember that it is the policies, procedures, rewards, and retributions that drive and groom advanced minds and good behavior and it is the employee behavior that expresses "culture." Gestalt approaches to culture change encourage a new sense of collective mindfulness, a new sense of acceptance and comfort in the flux of life. Imposing visions on people produces resistance; mindfulness, in the sense of expanded awareness of possibilities, produces a kind of playful experimentation and a willingness to embrace and forge new change.


The spirit of the organization comes from the top: An unenlightened leader who has a low level of self-knowledge, self-actualization, or low emotional intelligence in the broad sense of what cannot take a team or a company to a place which requires those things. Or managers are taught that they have a piece of greater knowledge, and then they go foist it upon their people. It just doesn't happen! In that environment, the self-actualization of people can't occur. It speaks to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how most managers are impeding progress up the pyramid rather than helping their people reach the summit. And there are no shortcuts to getting to that state, it’s a process and it takes time and a real commitment to getting there. Plus the willingness to open up and change. Only then does that person really become more effective, but many will not want to take that path or believe that it is necessary. And you wonder why engagement levels stay so low?


Being humans, we should have one big advantage - knowing about our own nature. People have no problem with change! They have problems with uncertainty, risk, and fear. So building a culture of learning, innovation, and risk-tolerance means that everyone involved owns and becomes more aware of their own impact on the culture of the organization around them, rather than having change foisted on them. With well-set principles, but not so overly rigid processes, people are inspired to strengthen their strength, to become who they are, and to unleash the talent potential which is well aligned with the business’s goals and purpose, to create synergy and accelerate business growth and maturity.





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