When was the last phone call, or face-to-face, with your manager where company culture, common purpose, or company values came up in conversation? How about during your last performance review—or business check point meeting? Maybe the topics came up at your annual planning meeting, offsite, or celebration.

People are every company’s greatest asset. Great companies routinely acknowledge they owe their success to their talented people. Clearly, most knowledge workers are high achieving, smart, motivated, experts who know what to do and how to do it. In an earlier post I discussed why the carrot and stick are no longer effective. All too often I hear how employees feel micro-managed or intimidated by their managers as if fear were some kind of virtuous, effective management principle.

In the 2012 Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement survey 95% of respondents (figure 10) said communication with Senior Management is Important or Very Important. It is virtually self-evident that the type of communication they are referring to is not function specific. What knowledge workers need to hear from their management is:

• Why do we exist?
• What do we believe in?
• Why is the world a better place because of our work?
• What will it look like when we achieve our goals?
• How are we performing compared to customer expectations and the competition?
• Which innovations must we achieve to ensure our future success?
• Why can I believe in our leadership team?

Every company has a culture whether they plan it or not. Some are toxic. Most are average. And some, maybe yours, can be exceptional if they make a healthy achieving culture a priority and put their plans to achieve it into action.

You can make your company culture a competitive advantage. Don’t leave it to chance.

Jim

Lucavìa
gojimlucas@lucavia.com
lucavia.com
(925) 980-7871

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