Make It Matter: How Managers Can Motivate by Creating Meaning by Scott Mautz

Author:Scott Mautz [Mautz, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780814436189
Publisher: AMACOM
Published: 2015-03-03T22:00:00+00:00

part four

DEVOTION

CHAPTER 7

Cultures of Consequence

There is a common misconception that a company’s culture is something to address once the fundamentals of performance are sound. The truth is, as work culture researcher Douglas Stewart found, if you want to change the performance of an organization, start with its cultural norms. Norms, attitudes, and beliefs that the workers adopt reflect directly on the organization’s performance. For example, an organization where people say, “Around here, you’ve got to watch your back and don’t make waves” produces very different results than one where you hear people say, “Around here, everyone really cares about each other and the quantity and quality of work we output together.”1 Accordingly, establishing a cultural norm that connects employees to one another and inspires a drive for greater achievement must be viewed as a fundamental for long-term, sustained success.

Harvard Professors John Kotter and James Heskett proved the impact an organization’s culture can have on performance in a study that analyzed 200 companies over an eleven-year period—the most comprehensive and decisive such study ever conducted. They found that companies that put energy into creating a performance-enhancing culture drove revenue 765 percent higher versus just one percent higher over the same period for companies without such a focus.2

So the key is to invest in a winning, performance-enhancing culture—but not just any kind will do.

For example, cultures that promote innovation, risk taking, and creativity certainly drive performance, as do cultures of accountability. All are great approaches.

The distinction to be made here, though, is whether the tenets of a culture drive performance in a way that profits everyone—the company and all its constituents. Does the culture propel performance in a way that maximizes daily meaning derived and fulfillment experienced for each of its members? Cultures that are rich in meaning manifestation generate feelings of significance, genuineness, belonging, and expanding personal potential—they are cultures of consequence. This approach sustains elevated performance over time.

How a company changes its culture also matters. Cultural change isn’t as easy as flipping a switch, but leaders, nonetheless, often think they can simply dictate culture. They soon learn they cannot, but not before giving cultural change a bad reputation. Leaders absolutely can and should put the right practices in place and set an example, but the organization itself must be driven to change something like culture. This motivation comes when people can feel meaning being introduced into the workplace. They can see the benefits and understand intrinsically why adopting a culture of consequence is so right once they begin to experience it. The combination of both a role-modeling leader and a willing organization leads to cultural change.

So what does a meaning-rich, performance-driving culture of consequence actually look like? Dig into and study any Great Workplaces list and you’ll uncover the three elements that the most meaning-rich cultures have in common: caring, authenticity, and teamwork.

A workplace’s culture firmly shapes the way employees show up every day and can boost or drain the baseline energy level. Cultures built on caring, authenticity, and teamwork

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