How to fix your broken company culture

A lot of my clients struggle with creating a high performing culture.

They either over-index on the perks, but fall short on the performance, or they try to drive performance through compliance, fear and blame.

In other words, they keep the people in the company constantly looking over their shoulders or waiting for the next shoe to fall.

Both are destructive, and the fixes for both are surprisingly similar:

Your sole job as a CEO is to create a culture that is psychologically safe. That means that people aren’t afraid to take risks, they’re not afraid to ask questions, and they’re not afraid to show up as themselves without fear of retribution or embarrassment.

To get to that level of trust, you have to be willing to be authentically vulnerable and open yourself. Most leaders I work with struggle with this change at first, but the people at the top set the tone and the temperature for everyone else.

If you’re walking the talk but the culture is still broken, the next place I look for trouble is your people leaders. This is where good intentions can go to die unless you are requiring and rewarding your leaders to role model the kinds of behaviors that create high performing cultures: strong communication, clarity on the strategy and everyone’s role in it, high accountability low blame, and a high level of emotional intelligence.

We can take you through a proven, step by step process to reshape and rebuild your culture. Don’t sleep on this one – if you’re trying to get somewhere fast, the difference maker on succeeding or failing will be your people and your culture.