The past few years have been rough for many people.
Employees have been laid off. Organizations have merged, restructured, and some have outright collapsed. And as things start to rebound, there is an outcome that seems to drag on. Corporate cultures that were once alive have gone pfffft faster than a balloon with a pin hole.
But I’d like to challenge the idea that the culture than went pffft is actually a symptom, not an outcome. If you look closely behind almost any dwindling culture, you’ll find a band of employees suffering from what Robert Holden calls “the wait problem.”
They’re sitting back waiting for someone else to be the one to step up to improve the team spirit. After all, who can blame them? They’re the victims in all of this, right? They didn’t stamp out the culture; it was stamped out on them.
That’s certainly one way to look at it (and probably the quickest way to lose top performers, sabotage productivity and lose credibility in the marketplace).
There is, however, another perspective you could take….
