Welcome to this episode of Jack Chat and another tiny lesson in leadership, straight up.
In this episode, I’m going to talk about an unseen force in every organization. A force that affects the thoughts, feelings and actions of every employee in the organization.
I’m talking about culture and it’s a BIG DEAL. It determines what it feels like to work in your organization.
It inspired the great management guru, Peter Drucker to say, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
Personally, I prefer donuts for breakfast. If culture ate donuts for breakfast, we’d be best friends.
Anyway… what did Drucker mean by this pithy statement? Well, he didn’t mean strategy is unimportant. He meant that if left unattended, your organization’s culture will never simply drift toward greatness. It will instead undermine every aspect of your success, no matter how sound your strategy is.
That’s alarming.
Now for the leadership lesson: YOUR LEADERS CREATE YOUR CULTURE.
I love the way Mark Miller puts it. Mark is the VP of High Performance Leadership at Chik-fil-A (a company famous for a culture of excellence and caring). He says leaders ANIMATE the culture in every organization.
Imagine the animation of culture in your company…It’s not just words on a poster.
Animate literally means “to bring to life.” You do this through your behaviors. Culture means “people like us do things like this.” What things do you do to animate culture?
Here are a few self-reflection questions to help you consider how you animate or “bring culture to life” in your organization:
-Can I clearly describe the desired culture of my organization?
-How are employees experiencing that desired culture today?
-In what ways are employees NOT experiencing that desired culture today?
Give those questions some thought… and join me again for another animated lesson in culture on the next episode of Jack Chat!