Changing Corporate Culture - Are Your Messages Consistent?

If we take a systems approach to companies, we will begin to reevaluate the way they are organized to see if they foster the concept of teams. One area that this is especially prevalent is in the way we give out awards and bonuses. Sometimes the very system which we create meaning to award, is the hindrance to creating the outcome we desire.

Case Study

Consider the case of one consulting/systems engineering company. This company has excellent health insurance, retirement benefits, flexible hours, merit pay and bonus systems. The employees are virtually assured of job security. Their bonus program looks great on the books. But, when it is examined deeper, one notices that the way it is run causes decreased productivity rather than greater from middle manager on down. The amount of bonus money the company gives out varies from year to year since the total amount available for distribution is based on the company's total profits. The employees and management that are involved in the most profitable programs are the ones who receive the bonuses. While this appears to be equitable, the company reorganizes frequently, which makes the bonus program very political. The manager who landed a multimillion dollar contract this year, when there was not much bonus money to distribute, may not be working this contract next year when the profit his/her efforts generated are realized. Thus, the person most responsible for the profit may be left out of the bonus distribution. The way this bonus program is set up doesn't encourage middle management to higher productivity or to search for new contracts. It motivates them to stay with contracts they have won and spend time protecting their "kingdom", instead of sharing information and contacts with others in an effort to acquire new contracts for the company. This recognition in the form of bonus, rather than being motivational, encourages territorialism and non-cooperation within and between divisions.

Another Example

A New Jersey Manufacturing co. decided to pay its buyers bonuses if they kept the cost of purchases down. To make that happen, they were relying on second-tier sources and accepting poor-quality materials. The company was in the middle of a very big order, and the fasteners were lousy and ended up costing millions of dollars, while the sourcing department walked away with big bonuses.

In Contrast

In contrast, a participant at a Blanchard seminar uses his "Catch Me Doing Something Right" buttons to boost team spirit. Each person starts out with one button. When an employee sees a coworker doing something right, that employee could take the other's button. The only way the coworker could get another one was to spread the praise to someone else and take his/her button. Peer praising worked to eliminate rivalries and jealousies that often are engendered in an office environment.

A Census Bureau fired 200 people recently rather than allow employees to take proportional work days as they had offered. Management seemed terrified to having the workers cooperate in a crisis and resorted to the in-charge mode of firing.

Need I mention the suffering morale of those remaining? Cases of burnout abound, not because of too much work, but because of the expectancy that our work is to be done in isolation. That we are not members one of another. In the end, we are alone. Work together - but only when I tell you, and in the way that I find suitable. But when push comes to shove, you're all out there alone - it's your individual job that's on the line. Is this what we have come to in our competitive world? I firmly believe that most of us want to work in atmospheres where community support and genuine compassion for each other was the rule rather than the exception. I just think we have gotten off the track.

We tend to separate the real us - the life we have outside the office from that which we are when we are at work. It requires a moment of pause and reflection and some old fashion remembering of time honored words like, "Love one another" or the golden rule "Do unto others and you would have it done to you." I've been fortunate to have never met anyone who basically disagreed with these principles. It's time we put them into practice.

Want to learn more about collaborative effort and a cultural change? Contact Dr. Toni LaMotta, the Midlife Mentor, who specializes in helping people and organizations reinvent themselves in Midlife.