1. “Leadership behaviours, conscious or unconscious, determine workplace culture.”
2. “Organisational culture is the key determinant of performance.”
3. “Leaders are differentiated from managers in their ability to initiate and integrate good cultures. Managers just live within them.”

Imagine you've recently been appointed as a leader, or you're a leader unsure of where to begin. Where should you start?

The danger for a new Managing Director or head of department is being pulled in multiple directions, with various teams—from product design to manufacturing to sales—seeking your intervention. However, your primary focus should be straightforward: ensure consistent cash flow, profitability, and customer satisfaction in your key market segments. Deviate from these priorities at your peril.

Prioritise Wisely

Many new leaders dive into prominent but troublesome processes, attempting to lead their resolution. Yet focusing on the wrong priorities early on can damage your reputation and credibility. People have long memories and recovering from early mistakes can be challenging.

Experience teaches that the first step is to “understand the levers” regarding cash, profitability and customer satisfaction. These levers are the key metrics that dictate success or failure. Monitor them closely and ensure that everyone around you knows about your personal interest in these metrics from the start. This way, everybody will take an interest in them.

Engage and Listen

Once you understand the levers, start engaging with all levels of the organisation. Use small groups, large groups, departments, and factions—whatever is appropriate. Find out what frustrates your people, where stresses across departmental lines lie, where they see opportunities for improvement and what excites them. Understand where morale, self-esteem, and pride in the job lie within your new company. Encourage everyone, regardless of their position, to clarify and resolve problems. Delegate effectively where necessary, but avoid getting personally involved. Stay visibly in touch and repeat the process frequently. Rather than just "Communicate, communicate, communicate," focus on "Listen, listen, listen."

The Benefit of This Approach

By actively encouraging engagement in both problem identification and resolution from the outset, you demonstrate trust and belief in your colleagues’ abilities. This effort creates and disseminates the right “culture”—the way the organisation intuitively tackles challenges. It also helps you understand sub-cultures within the organisation, where values and approaches may differ from those declared by the company as a whole.

Sub-cultures are powerful. For example, employees working permanent shifts often find that the company’s values do not permeate through a lack of direct contact with key influencers or leaders. Instead, the shift supervisor becomes pivotal in creating an individual culture. This may not correspond to the values espoused elsewhere. The solution is complex, but a start is selecting shift supervisors for attitude as much as experience and providing ongoing training in disseminating the desired values and behaviours. Senior leaders must find ways to be in regular contact with the workforce, not just appearing when things go wrong.

Managing Culture Takes Time

Managing culture takes time. My former colleague at Leigh Paints, Dick Frost, who was phenomenally successful with Employee Engagement (Team Enterprise), argues that discretionary time needs to be skewed towards managing culture. I have been criticised in my career for what was viewed as over-communicating and for not engaging in “part number chasing” except in extremis. Escalating routine issues to board level simply delegates problems upwards that should be dealt with at the sharp end. Many leaders preoccupy themselves with trivia to give a veneer of control but neglect the crucial task of embedding an integrated and responsive approach to doing business optimally.

The Payoff

Following my recommendations will take an inordinate amount of time and may be resented by some beneath you in the hierarchy who prefer to keep their own empires. But it will pay off, often quickly. Enthusiasm for culture change can spread among the management team, especially the second tier, who often find it liberating. But if you are the leader, do not let go. Without your presence and visible championing, it will wither away like many management initiatives.

Equip Yourself

There is no shortcut in the early days, but you can equip yourself to be more sure-footed. I have been a fan of the LEAD™ program since before it was developed. LEAD™ differs from other programs in that it doesn’t teach irrelevant techniques but covers the entire gamut of culture change and gives you access to the mentoring skills of the QuoLux™ team and your new colleagues on the course.

Conclusion

Taking over the leadership role of a company or department is a major challenge, often taken on without informed guidance. Following previous practices can instill bad habits unless you are very lucky. Be brave and put your own stamp on the organisation and its culture. Always remember, a dysfunctional culture reflects a dysfunctional leadership team. If the culture is good, you should get the credit. If it’s bad, ...

John J. Oliver

How Can You Learn More?

You could read John Oliver’s book “Growing Your Own Heroes: The Commonsense Way to Improve Business Performance” (John Oliver and Clive Memmott, Oak Tree Press, 2006).

If you'd like to hear more about our next LEAD™ program starting in November 2024, please get in touch here.

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