Corporate culture is really hard to define, but I think it can be defined as the side effects of working for your organization. Take the example of some well-known prescription drugs that are out on the market today. You see advertisements for them on TV and they list off a huge list of potential side effects that could happen to you as a result of taking the medicine. Some side effects include hair loss, weight gain, bleeding from the eyes or even death.

You may sit there and watch those commercials and think, who would take these medicines when they have all of these potential side effects. But the fact is, many of us experience these same side effects from the organization we work for. Due to work stress, burnout, bad leaders etc… we experience hair loss, weight gain, arguments with our spouses and sometimes even death.

The question I pose to executives is, if I were to bottle up what it’s like to work at your organization into a pill form, would you swallow it? If the answer is no, how can you expect your employees to swallow that pill if you aren’t willing to?

If you are not willing to swallow that pill, you have to ask yourself why not and what can we do to fix it. How can you create an organization where you yourself would swallow that pill?