“This place is killing me,” the CEO said to me.
“I need 35%+ growth this year and my executives are expert finger pointers.”
He had a Crushed Culture.
He'd joined a mid-sized healthcare company one year ago, and had been breaking up executive brawls ever since. Here's a typical example:
The VP Marketing wanted to spend more money on campaigns. The CFO objected—he hadn't seen ROI on the current campaigns. The CFO came to the CEO, complaining that the VP Marketing was “impossible.”
Let The BlameFest Begin!
The CEO would then mentor the CFO on how to better communicate with the VP Marketing: how to inquire and understand the expenses better, maybe even how to hold him accountable for his expenditures. And then…
Tactics would be developed.
Tactics would be deployed.
Fleeting temporary change would occur.
Because tactics are stupid.
When it comes to human behavior, tactics don't truly deeply change anything. The next time there's an executive clash they'll be right back in the CEO's office. Tactics treat the Symptom instead of the System.
In my previous blog How Change Fails I covered the 6 levels of change and how Core/Culture is the highest impact level, followed by Identity and Beliefs. To change the System for either an individual or a company we must first understand the Present State (where we currently are) and the Desired State (what we want). Read the complete ForbesWoman blog post.
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