Culture plays an integral role in your organization’s success or failure. Learn a four-step process to create a new culture or change an existing one. Today’s post is by Chuck Wisner, author of the forthcoming book, Conscious Conversations (CLICK HERE to learn more). Cultures are patterns of human interaction that define the values and the behaviors that help groups accomplish a shared mission. In an organization, the culture is the soup in which work gets done. It influences employee satisfaction, customer retention, and the bottom line. Getting organizational culture right is complicated, but it can mean the difference between a flourishing organization and a floundering one. Defining an organization’s culture and bringing awareness to the vital role it plays is a big step to shifting productivity and positivity and to increasing customer satisfaction. Yet organizations are often like fish swimming in polluted water, unaware of the unhealthy environment that surrounds them. Undefined unconscious cultural norms are hidden forces that encourage the worst of human nature. Put any group of ambitious people together in a hierarchical structure with sizable goals and a good salary, and you’re sure to see an outbreak of competitiveness, cliquey behavior, distrust, jealousy, and resentment. Competition overshadows collaboration, individual egos trump collective goals, and ambition outshines curiosity. Without an intentional approach to culture, an unconscious culture will slowly emerge in a company or team, influenced by leaders’ personalities, relationships, and the quality of conversations that teams have or don’t have. Some people say, “$#!& happens.” I say, “Culture happens.” It’s not unusual for leaders to wake up one morning and say, “Why are we behaving this way? When did we become so disjointed?” To fix a broken culture, it’s useful to examine how world-class teams work together and the role conversations play. Those teams typically have two things […]