Company culture is cracking

Having identified 10 culture cracks (read more here) often experienced across organisations, I developed a quiz to help identify where issues might be simmering and enable targeted action before serious failures occur.

305 people completed the quiz, across multiple countries, job roles and organisations. This enabled exploration of the trends in experiences of culture and to understand the extent to which company culture is cracking.

88% are likely to be experiencing at least one culture crack

Experiences of culture cracks are prevalent. 88% of people are likely to be experiencing at least one crack in their organizational cultures, and 82% report two or more. It would seem that organisational culture is cracking.

The culture cracks most often reported were 'History Lessons' (67%), 'Hero Complex' (60%), 'Silence' (57%) and 'Frozen Core' (55%). Typical challenges include: A lack of openness to new ideas; being stuck in the past; and feeling threatened by the outside. This is likely to seriously hold individuals and organisations back from embracing transformation and anticipating change.

Companies also appear to form an unhealthy reliance on a small group of caped crusaders to ‘save’ the day. A reliable team of ‘stars’ who swoop in to solve issues and deliver great results when the pressure is on. This tendency is often accompanied by bouncing from crisis to crisis. This state is not sustainable, and dependency on the same ‘heroes’ to come to the rescue can cause resentment, block learning and succession, and stifle progress.

Stuck in the past and struggling to truly understand whole workforce potential and capability, would seem to be a common state for many.

Women report more culture cracks than men

Interestingly, the data revealed a slight difference in the average number of culture cracks reported by women and men. Women are higher at 4.3 per person, versus men at 4.1 per person. In addition, culture cracks rated top differ by gender. Women are most likely to experience ‘Hero Complex’ and men ‘Silence’. This is an intriguing difference – are women seeing more men play the role of 'hero'? Other research suggests this might be the case, and that those playing heroic roles feed on confidence over competence. Men are more likely than women to put themselves forward for new roles and opportunities, even when they lack direct experience, for example.  

This appears more significant when considering the recent finding that women are 41% more likely than men to experience toxic cultures. Based on an analysis of more than 3 million US Glassdoor reviews, the MIT report found women spoke more negatively than men about most elements of culture, including work-life balance and collaboration. The largest gap between the genders, by far, is for toxic culture, which the authors describe as a workplace culture that is disrespectful, non-inclusive, unethical, cutthroat, or abusive.

The need to identify when and where toxicity could begin is critical, and even more so in the quest to nurture diverse and equitable organisations.

On the flipside, men encountering silence when attempting to engage with people and spark debate might suggest there is a skills gap to be addressed. It has often been purported that women demonstrate greater natural people skills than men – empathy, emotional intelligence, reading social cues. As we continue to engage with people across hybrid settings, it is quite possible that investment in social skill development is desperately needed for many, particularly as limited dialogue is symptomatic of a lack of psychological safety (without which it is exceptionally difficult to build a healthy organisational culture). Could this intervention help change behaviour and gendered experiences of culture?

The only regions with large enough data sets to explore differences were the US and UK&I. In the US, 'History Lessons' comes top and in the UK&I, 'Hero Complex' is number 1. Do American based teams have bigger challenges around moving forward, bringing the outside in and driving continuous transformation? And in the UK&I is there more credit-grabbing behaviour going unchallenged? Are leaders more inclined to rely on the same people they regard as stars to solve tricky problems? And in doing so, more likely to crush the engagement, commitment, and development of others.

These negative experiences are most common, and damaging our cultures

Digging a little deeper, these are the experiences most commonly reported, grinding people down every day…

At the root of these experiences lie the core elements of what makes us human. A need to feel valued and belong, to feel supported and secure, and able to make our own decisions so that we can learn and grow. For organisations, this boils down to creating environments where individuals and teams experience trust and empowerment, feel able to express thoughts and ideas, see their contributions and achievements fairly recognised and rewarded, and experience honest and constructive feedback to progress their careers.

Repairing the cracks

Based on the most common experiences of culture cracks, here are 5 actions to repair and strengthen cultures:

1. Bolster psychological safety – so that individuals feel willing and able to be themselves, to share ideas, discuss challenges, and engage in conversation to help move the company forward.
2. Enable true capability to shine – commit to enabling genuine capability and potential to shine through. Don’t allow people to take credit for others’ work or habitually celebrate those who rely on style over substance.
3. Build comfort with change – any kind of change comes with personal risk. Building a culture where people feel supported to try things (even if they fail), encouraged to learn and grow, and build skills in managing change, will strengthen capability to continuously transform.
4. Develop feedback skills – being able to give and receive constructive feedback is an incredible skill and will ripple through the organisation. It takes time to build capability to deliver constructive messages with empathy, but it will provide a great foundation for transparency, trust and growth.
5. Empower managers – let go of the reigns, and let your managers in. Very often they know what will make a difference; what will land, what won’t. Get them close to what’s important and they will make things happen.

The results from this analysis suggest there is an urgent need to act. The stakes are high. If we don't, cultures will crack completely. Experiences of toxic workplaces will multiply, and businesses and people could go beyond the point of no return.