Leadership, Culture… and the Coming Housecleaning

Leadership, Culture… and the Coming Housecleaning

Let me throw a slightly uncomfortable thought your way.

Most businesses don’t have a product problem or a technology problem.

They have a leadership and culture problem.

I always try to keep one thing in mind when plotting a new north.

Less is better.

You really only need one thing to take an organization to the next level of success:

The right leadership building the right culture.

Now I can already hear the expert opinions forming. Somewhere along the way someone will quietly conclude that a head injury must have been involved… because when things aren’t moving forward, people usually start looking everywhere except leadership and culture.

They’ll say, “What about products? Productivity? Technology? Strategy?”

All important things.

But they’re overlooking the biggest driver of success in any business.

Leadership.

Leadership sets the tone. Leadership builds the culture. And culture drives everything else.

When leadership gets this right, something interesting happens. People move faster. They work together instead of around each other. Momentum shows up.

And momentum changes things.

Here’s a stat worth thinking about: only about 31% of employees in the U.S. are truly engaged at work. Roughly seven out of ten people are either checked out or actively disengaged.

Even more interesting, Gallup found that managers account for about 70% of the difference in employee engagement.

Think about that for a second.

Engagement isn’t primarily an employee issue.

It’s a leadership one.

Strong cultures understand this. They have very little tolerance for bureaucratic behavior, ego-driven decisions, or people protecting their turf. Those things slow organizations down.

The businesses that move forward will be led by people who are learning, adapting, and intentionally building cultures that pull people in instead of pushing them along.

That’s exactly why we built Elevate. Click here to know more about Elevate.

If you’re serious about building the kind of culture we’re talking about… we should probably talk.

The time for slow walking is over. thad