The Best Corporate Culture — Love versus Fear

The Role of Love versus Fear in Creating the Best Corporate Culture
Let’s start by defining the best corporate culture.  While workplace cultures, the way things get done in a business day-by-day, can take on many different forms, we define the best corporate culture as one that:

• Is healthy in terms of trust, leadership and employee engagement
• Is high performing in terms of how performance is exposed, measured and rewarded
• Is aligned in terms of helping to move the business strategy forward

Culture Exists By Design or By Default
Every company has a workplace culture, whether by default or design. The right kind of corporate culture — one that supports a positive, open, trusting, learning environment — rarely occurs on its own. We maintain that a healthy cultural environment can be created over time given the right purpose, commitment, and encouragement.

Why Organizational Culture Matters
We have helped high growth-minded clients for over twenty five years to assess their organizational culture and then collectively define and shape the best corporate culture they want — one that aligns with their business strategy and their talent management plans. The right corporate culture, beyond making their company a great place to work, provides real benefits.

• A recent Harvard Business School research report described how an effective culture can account for up to half of the differential in performance between organizations in the same business.
• Our own organizational alignment research found that cultural factors account for up to 40% of the difference between high and low growth companies.

How work gets done matters to both the hard and soft sides of the ledger.

Where Does This Leave The Individual Employee?
Many psychologists say that fear and love are the primary filters of human behavior.  Think of “fear” as your lesser self, your ego, a way to define yourself through external factors and others.  Think of “love” as the absence of fear, your inner purpose or your “why.”

It is said these two opposing forces govern our choices of how we treat ourselves and others both on and off work. They pretty much define how we engage with people and provide the basis for how we think, behave, and work. One supports a the right culture which is positive, the other supports a negative corporate culture.

Turning the Negative Into the Positive
Researchers estimate that we have as many as 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts per day and about 80% of those thoughts — conscious or unconscious — are negative. What if you could turn those negative thoughts to the positive to help create the best corporate culture one person at a time?

The Bottom Line
Ultimately, we, as individuals and leaders, are responsible for our thoughts. We make choices every day about which thoughts we pay attention to. Surrounding employees with the best corporate culture will help them choose the positive path to move your business and people strategies forward.

To learn more about creating the best corporate culture, download The 3 Levels of Culture that You Must Get Right