How do we go about Improving Corporate Culture?
The first video of a five-part series on creating a corporate culture of accountability on your team.
I will discuss employee accountability and employee engagement ideas, strategies, motivation, retention and productivity.
You can read the summary of the video below:
I do a lot of management training around the country and one of the common complaints I hear from managers is that within their corporate culture there are those who don’t take the responsibility for and are not accountable for the jobs they need to get done.
They ask: “How Do I Go About Improving Corporate Culture?”
I want to talk about what you can do as a manager, whether you are an overall manager or a team leader. There are some things that as leaders we can do to ensure that people can and will take responsibility to do the jobs they’re assigned to do and to do them without your nagging.
First, think about each person who maybe is giving you this kind of a problem and complete this sentence:
I would be more effective working with blank…IF…
If you completed this sentence, starting right after the the word IF with the word He or She, you might want to think about how you’re approaching this problem, because whoever this person is, let’s say it’s Bob, do you think that Bob is going to wake up one morning, have an epiphany and say:
“You know I haven’t been as accountable as I should have been and I don’t take responsibility when things go wrong. I need to step up to the plate more often!”
The chances of that happening are probably right around zero, so you might want to think about changing that pronoun from “He” or “She” to “I”.
What can “I” do to raise the odds that Bob or whoever we’re talking about will:
- Take more responsibility to be more accountable to see that his reports are on time?
- That he’s dealing with customers in a proactive way?
- That he’s getting his work done
- That he isn’t dumping stuff on team members
- That he is carrying his weight
One way to start this off then is to ask yourself: “Is Bob aware of what he should be doing?”
Maybe you haven’t expressed your expectations of him clearly so I would suggest that a good place to start is to clarify those expectations of Bob.
Within a work setting, expectations can fall into three categories:
Duties
These are the tasks that are usually spelled out in the job description, although there are many included this category under the title “Other Duties As Assigned.” This is fine, but do all your the employees understand what those “Other Duties” might entail. If they don’t, I will be challenging for them to know when, where and under what circumstances they should step out of their normal roles and take on the new task or responsibility
Goals
These are the milestones that you want to see your employees achieve in their own growth.
I worked with a CEO of a chemical company who had an interesting approach in this area.
He told every person he hired that he expected them to not be in the job they’re being hired for within two years. In other words, he expected them to move up in the organization or to move out. Not necessarily to get fired, but to perhaps look for other work if there’s nothing else for them to do within the company. Now that may be scary for some of us who don’t like employee turnover but his idea was that when you encourage people to grow, you get a better performance from them and they appreciate it because it’s for their own benefit.
Professional Practices
Professional practices are those practices that get the job done. It’s not just what you do but how you do it. This is where people have the most trouble when it comes to being perceived as accountable or not.
I’m going to be posting about once a week on my website, so in next week’s session on Improving Corporate Culture, we will drill down on specific professional practices and discuss what you can do to raise the odds your employees will meet and exceed your expectations of accountability!