Three exciting trends in business culture. What works for you, what doesn’t, and why?
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The water cooler culture is dead (mostly) and the cubicle nation is under attack. Start up incubators are cool, and the coffee shop is the new corner office. Big business is still, well … big. But small businesses are providing the majority of the jobs — less than 40 percent of the private sector workforce is employed by large businesses. And the start up/entrepreneurial/small business culture is starting to invade even the largest of corporations.
Now, it’s finally being recognized that culture, more than any other aspect of a business, is responsible for productivity and the bottom line.
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Culture and mindset are increasingly looked at as a way to increase productivity. Now business media outlets frequently feature articles on company culture, top CEO’s are asked to speak to how their culture drives their company’s success, and Entrepreneur.com is even launching a yearly “Top Company Cultures list.” (You can nominate your company if you think you’ve got a winning company culture.)
When I started my consulting career 20 years ago, talking about culture and mindset got you labeled as as “woo-woo” or “warm and fuzzy.” Management experts were supposed to focus on increasing productivity and the bottom line. Now, it’s finally being recognized that culture, more than any other aspect of a business, is responsible for productivity and the bottom line.
There are three trends in particular that will continue to change business culture — I think for the better:
Value for the Individual
Corporate culture has been quintessentially plug and play — a workforce made up of interchangeable parts, expendable drones, replicatable job descriptions filled by replaceable people. But something interesting happened in the time after the wave of downsizing. The reduced workforce became an irreplaceable workforce. People were doing so many jobs that losing a key person meant a huge search and training expense. Interdependence became more important. Managers couldn’t separate themselves from their direct reports as easily, they had to come out of their lairs and get in the trenches. In sneaky ways the scaled down big business had to start behaving like the shoestring operation small business.
Those sneaky changes are showing up in a lot of different ways. The downsizing hit professional men harder than it did women. So more men had to became comfortable with the idea of their wives making more money. More men had to come to terms with staying home and raising children. And more men decided that those changes weren’t all bad — not at all. So more men started demanding equal opportunities to be home with their newborns, and to take their sick toddler to the doctor, and to work from home so that they could be there when the kids came home from school. Slowly we’re talking less about the “mommy track” and more about how work can be balanced with family, for both parents regardless of gender.
We’re also seeing a trend toward employer’s encouraging the dreams and goals of the individual. Books like Matthew Kelly’s The Dream Manager, and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni set the stage for leadership that focused on the individual’s needs and desires as a means to greater productivity and profit.
Finally, we’re reaching a time when decisions makers are either of the GenX or even Millennial generations. These younger influencers tend to believe individualism is a value rather than a curse. From accepted attire and personal style to taking time for the things that matter most, a successful company culture is now more likely to support such individual choices rather than demand that their employees follow stereotypical and outdated guidelines.
Leveraging Technology
Technology isn’t going to become any less prominent in the workplace, and it is having a multifaceted effect on culture. It’s changing the way we communicate with our peers and with our clients. It’s changing the requirements for being in the office when you need to be on the job. It’s changing the way information is stored, shared, displayed, and consumed. Which means it’s changing the culture.
But technology is changing culture in ways that aren’t strictly business related. Social media, whether it’s embraced or blocked by company firewalls, is changing work relationships and the visibility of personal lives. What might once have been discussed over a round of drinks and forgotten, or at least written off in a he said/she said stalemate, now often shows up on multiple timelines. Cameras are everywhere, and the places to post the resulting images go far beyond the company bulletin board. Employees who work remotely, possibly even in different countries, might seldom see each other to shake hands, and yet they are connected personally and socially through their online profiles. So cultures can easily shift toward transparency at the same time that they become more physically divided.
Technology will continue to open possibilities for new work dynamics, and new personal dynamics. Which means the culture will have to continue to shift as well.
Flexibility in Exchange for Accountability
From letting employees take meetings in the corner coffee shop instead of the company board room, to offering “unlimited vacation,” micromanagement is soooo last century.
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This trend is, to some extent, responding to the value of the individual and made possible by technology. It basically comes down to a culture of “do as you please so long as you meet your obligations.”
From letting employees take meetings in the corner coffee shop instead of the company board room, to offering “unlimited vacation,” micromanagement is soooo last century. The “unmonitored work schedule” is a culture of trust and measurements — theoretically employees are evaluated based on outcomes and productivity rather than hours worked or effort expended. Of all the trends, this may require the greatest shift in mindset, as our culture has long valued the harried, over-worked, but dedicated employee. But as that shift happens and less emphasis is put on time and effort and more on creativity and productivity, we will also see an even greater trend toward supporting individual needs and desires, especially in terms of family choices, for both men and women.
This also reflects a trend toward giving employees the opportunity to share in the risk and reward equation even if they don’t own the business. The “Intrapreneur culture” is a trend I expect to see expanded as well as the trend toward bringing in specialists in the form of out-source entrepreneurs rather than hiring in house talent.
None of these trends are showing up enough to call them commonplace. But they are evident enough to warrant our attention. Have you seen evidence of any of these trends in your workplace? How are they impacting you?
I really like this piece. The point about “Cultures can easily shift toward transparency at the same time that they become more physically divided” is so true, and so current. I think you do a great job succinctly pointing out real trends that no longer fall into the category of “that will never happen.” Technology and an embrace of individualism at work is driving it. One thing I find powerful is the idea that allowing autonomy and individualism to thrive at work actually leads to stronger and more prideful culture. Look forward to reading more from you. GoodSeeker.com