Above the Line by Michael Henderson

Author:Michael Henderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780730312512
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.1 dead culture’s position

A dying company culture is a culture that is about to die and everyone can sense it, as the feel of the culture is bad — really bad. The sickness of the culture affects everyone and everything negatively, including customer satisfaction, employee fulfilment, management, productivity and leadership effectiveness. A dying culture can occur on a large scale, with attendant media attention and publicity. In more recent times than Enron, we have seen BP, Barclays bank, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and the Bank of England all accused of operating in a below the line manner. However, a dying culture can also occur in small- to medium-sized businesses. All that is required is for things to be bad in the culture and no-one being accountable or taking responsibility for doing anything about it.

The difference between a culture that is dying and one that is at the next level up in our review of below the line cultures is that, by the time the culture has reached the stage that it is dying, it is almost impossible to turn things around. This does not mean it is impossible, just very, very difficult and probably unlikely. Dying cultures can be thought of as the Titanic after it had hit the iceberg but before it sank under the icy surface of the North Atlantic Ocean — filled with dread, panic, selfishness, desperation and the occasional final act of heroism. In the organisational cultures that I have personally witnessed at the level of dying, some of the common behaviours I witnessed included:

Lies. With the pressure on to achieve more when it is clear everything is declining (company revenues, productivity, performance, customer and employee satisfaction), people feel pressured to revert to lying or selling half-truths to protect themselves or buy themselves and their team more time. Leaders lie to the board about how well things are going, and then do the same to the staff, keeping people uninformed and only telling people, as one CEO told me recently, ‘on a need-to-know basis’. The need-to-know basis he was referring to was to ensure no-one jumped ship prematurely before he could wring every last cent out of the business for shareholders before the ship went down. In true below the line style, he had also seen fit to organise his own life raft, in the shape of a similar role with a competing company.

Cheating. This is about cheating the system, be it the tax system, the internal or external auditing system, cheating customers (for example through providing them with inferior stock or by fixing prices above their market value). It’s as if, in a dying company culture, it suddenly becomes acceptable for people to be dishonest or sneaky, or even act illegally. Stealing company and colleagues’ property may also occur.

Sabotage. Of projects, company equipment and other people’s property. Vengeance seems to be a big focus in a dying culture. Once people have awoken to the fact that the company ship is going down and they are going down with it, people look for someone to blame and then go out looking for revenge.

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