Organizational culture is an interesting thing. There are an infinite number of definitions, papers, books, articles, and blogs about the topic because as Peter Drucker once said, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast."
In my role as a consultant specializing in talent development, I have the opportunity of working with and exploring many facets of business and leadership. I was recently interviewing a senior executive who was serving as a subject matter expert for a custom business leadership simulation called Leading Strategic Execution. We were discussing organizational culture for several of the scenarios when I asked him about the most unusual organizational culture he ever worked in and he laughed.
"It was definitely my last company."
After making sure that everything he was sharing would be anonymous and confidential, he started telling me about the company and its culture of what he called Self-importance and Aggrandizement. “I've never experienced anything like it and I probably won’t ever again. Every employee from the executives to the individual contributors thought they were the most important person walking the planet."
I asked the executive for an example of this type of business culture. "We were in the middle of the most important decisions in the history of the company; designing and executing and outsourcing bid. We were evolving our strategy to outsource manufacturing of our core products to reduce the costs of our commoditized products and enable us to focus our own manufacturing on our more expensive, higher margin products. A small cross functional team was assigned to run the process of selecting an outsourcing partner. Every vendor that pitched us experienced the same dysfunctional behaviors; meetings were cancelled at the last minute after the vendor flew in for the meeting, the vendors never got to talk and were constantly talked over and around, and no vendor was trusted or treated like a partner at any point in the process. Every single member of that decision making team really thought they knew more than the vendors about everything including the way the vendors ran their own business...and of course they didn't. The entire process was six months late and we missed a critical window for the launch of a new product because we didn’t have enough capacity. And at the end of the day, the team blamed it all on the ‘horrible’ vendors who wouldn’t accommodate their needs. In business, arrogance and stupidity are truly a deadly combination."
Unfortunately, every day this story probably plays out in slightly different ways around the world in thousands of business organizations. So what do you do (besides quitting)? How can you lead or find a path to success in such a negative culture?
Based on research, observations, and experiences, here are three ideas and skills for leading in an organizational culture of self-importance and aggrandizement:
Remain humble
As hard as is it may be, the most important thing that a leader can do is remain humble and not convert or fall into the trap of the negative culture. The leader I spoke with ultimately decided to leave. Many leaders who don’t become the most important person on the planet will be fired or asked to leave, but if you remain you need to find a comfort zone and stick with the behaviors that you think are right.
Pick the appropriate battles
In the battle to do the right things and remain humble, there is a temptation to fight very battle. That is the surest way to fail. My suggestion is to pick the appropriate battles and do everything possible to win those so you can maintain your comfort zone space.
When all else fails, stay focused on the customers
If it is impossible to remain humble and the battles are too plentiful and hard to avoid, there is one last place for survival: focus on customers. Even in the most dysfunctional organizations there are still customers who believe in the value proposition and the products or services that are being sold. My suggestion is to do everything possible to stay involved with the customers and try to never get more than one or two levels removed from the customer buying and user experience. If you find yourself so far removed from the customers and nothing else is working, then let the most important people on the planet have their company and go run it. They most likely won’t be the most important people on the planet for much longer.
