How to heal a toxic culture?

We hear stories of workplaces with backstabbing, blame games, taking the credit from others, kiss up -kick down antics and worse. Unfortunately, some of you spend your work days in this kind of environment. In some cases, there are pockets of suffering teams caused by individual bad managers that are allowed to continue their pillaging. In other cases, the poison has permeated the whole company culture. Is there anything to be done when the problem has reached this level of severity? A culture can be healed; it takes time and intentional steps.

Start from the top

One could argue that the most important task of the leadership team is to manage the company culture. Everything else follows. As the top team has such an influence on the culture, you are often part of the problem as well. Do you have the guts and self awareness to put the stake in the ground and turn the company around, even if it requires some significant soul searching and behavior change on your own part? If you can’t resolve your simmering conflicts and passive aggressive positioning, there is not much hope for the rest of the organization.

Trash to treasure

Assess your existing culture. There is no culture that is totally rotten. Identify the legacy you can build on and be proud of. Perhaps among all the stings and arrows flying everyone ended up being very punctual and concise in communications. Or, even though it is totally overboard, everyone says what they mean. Once you are able to articulate what you are dealing with, define what you aspire for. Create a vision for your new culture and share with your employees.

Open feedback

Although easier said than done, the only way to build a new culture is through open feedback. Leaders, managers and employees must learn to express to each other how they perceive each others’ behaviors and how they would like to shape them towards the new culture. The goal is to make it a safe experience, thus it is a delicate, arduous and exciting journey. As many mistakes will be made, the company must also develop a learning focus where learning from mistakes will be celebrated. This concept itself will be hard to grasp for employees who have lived in a company where coworkers were looking for opportunities to pull the rug from beneath their feet at the first opportunity.

Manage out the toxic behaviors

Managers’ role will be to slowly guide the teams to the new behaviors using informal feedback and coaching. Those who are too entrenched in their old toxic behaviors need to be managed out to show to the workforce that the new culture is for real.

Long term maintenance

As the culture gets traction, it is important that the new blood in the company reinforces the new culture. The selection process must be aligned with the new cultural values. The stricter the selection, promotion and reward decisions are made based on the cultural values, the stronger they are adopted by the rest of the population. Track the progress by using cultural surveys and focus groups. The metrics and stories will both tell you when the toxin levels will start decreasing. The business results will show it too.

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True core values: Seeing through the spin

We all have read company websites that list their company values. The most common are financial goals, ethics and integrity, teamwork, customer focus, safety, quality and innovation. In employee orientation, we further hear how these values are so important to the success of the organization. And then, after the first couple of days, we start seeing and hearing “how things really work around here”. We start getting the sense what the true priorities are. In successful companies, the management and the workforce walk the talk. The stated cultural values match the real organizational values. In other places, it doesn’t take long to see the disconnect. Sometimes, even good companies lose their True North, a good recent example being Toyota.

Usually, true values shine through when push comes to shove. In final decision making, the most important values determine the outcome.

If quality is a true core value, is the company willing to pay millions of dollars to recall vehicles as early as the defect is detected? Or, in a software release, which core value will win, if the product still has significant bugs, but the product is late? It doesn’t matter how much e-learning is given on integrity and respect, if company executives behind closed doors use four-letter words. Everybody knows.

You can also detect core values through resource allocation. If the company touts how diversity is one of its core values, but cuts its diversity training budget among the first items, the walk does not match the talk. If a company advertises how it is customer focused and then proceeds to lay off its customer support personnel before other functions, the actions talk louder than the words.

Employees choose their actions based on logic. Once they figure out what leads to positive or negative consequences in their work environment, they adjust accordingly. They have been assimilated. This reinforcement comes from leadership, management and their peers. They seek approval of their superiors and coworkers. Start time of meetings is a good example. Ask any employee and they will tell you with 5-minute accuracy how much early or late you can arrive. A scary thing is that in many organizations, bad behavior is tolerated and this is noticed. Perhaps a verbally abusive manager who produces financial results gets promoted. The message sent about the priority of core values could not be clearer. Often, high tech companies have big award ceremonies after a painful release and death march. What they don’t realize is that although it feels so fair to recognize the extra effort, they also elevate the core value of a hero culture, often a result of lack of planning and under resourcing a project.

Every action and decision reflects the culture. Every organization has a culture. The first step is to know your culture, the second step is to manage it.

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Copyright 2010 Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks, all rights reserved.
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How to determine the true cultural values of your organization
	Not our values	May be our values	Our true values
Stated		uWritten on company website uShared in employee orientation uShared in customer presentations	uCome up as priorities in team meetings uUsed as guideline in crisis meetings uStated behind closed doors
Resourced	uDon’t get budget/resources	uGet budget/resources in good times	uGet budget/resources in tough times
Reinforced	uNot tolerated uLead to negative consequences uLead to disciplinary action uLower social ranking at work	uTolerated, no consequences uRecognized	uLead to positive consequences uLead to rewards, promotions uIncrease social ranking at work
Copyright: Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks – All Rights Reserved

Why is nothing changing after training?

According to Robert Brinkerhoff research, only about 15% of learning impact is determined by the actual training event. Up to 85% of the learning impact is influenced by external factors: what happens before and after. As so much scrutiny is put on the actual training event, and not much attention is paid to what really matters, it’s no wonder that most training sessions become a nice, although high quality, break from the daily grind but not much more.

Typical pitfalls of training with low impact are:

• Wrong people sent to the training
• Lack of purpose / expectations
• No opportunity to apply new skills and knowledge
• Lack or reinforcement after training
• Work environment makes it difficult to apply new skills and knowledge
• Wrong learning attitude

1. Send the right people to the training

The reason to train a person is to improve or learn a new skill, behavior or knowledge. This can be achieved through many methods. Sometimes just handing a simple job aid or a book could do the trick. If a fundamental behavior change is expected, one-on-one coaching over a long period time is often more appropriate. In some cases, the whole team needs to adopt a new methodology, approach or tool, and training everyone at the same time is the most efficient. If your employee is having a behavior problem, training is not the silver bullet. I have seen whole teams sent to a behavior improvement class so that the manager could avoid having a frank discussion with just a couple of employees. Sit down with your low performers and communicate your expectations. If it truly is a skill gap, you may consider training. In most cases, it is matter of close monitoring and getting back on track. Send your high performers to state-of-the-art workshops and conferences where they really get to expand their expertise.

2. Set the expectation for learning

Whether it’s your whole team or one or two individuals, plan ahead to make the most of the learning experience. If you are not concerned with the ROI of the learning, why bother sending them at all? Be clear why they are going to this particular training and why they were picked. Make the new skill part of their performance plan, and expect them to share the key learning points with you and the team.

3. Ready to apply

Prepare for their return so that learners will immediately be able to apply what they learned. If it is new software, the tool should be installed on their computer, ready to use. If they are going to learn negotiation skills, agree with them in which deal will they be testing the new skills. If there won’t be any chance to apply upon return, delay the training.

4. Reinforce and enforce

Inspect what you expect. Ask for a briefing on the key learning points. Work together to create a simple action plan to ensure that the skills are applied immediately after the training. Monitor progress and celebrate success together. Give feedback and coaching as much as you are familiar with the topic.

5. Create a supportive work environment

Cynical coworkers can certainly kill any budding new skill. Set rules of engagement for the whole team to expect support. If the whole team is learning new methods, share war stories, wins and best practices as they emerge. Remove obstacles such as bureaucratic processes or old systems that can be counterproductive to the excitement of gaining new skills.

6. Select people with a positive learning attitude

To create an innovative organization, you need people who are curious, open to change and who want to continuously improve and learn new things. Make this a performance evaluation and promotion criteria and, more importantly, a  selection criteria for new hires. Nothing stops progress more than an employee who thinks he or she knows everything there is to know and poisons the learning environment for everyone else on the team.

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Copyright 2010 Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks, all rights reserved.
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