Organizational culture is always changing. It’s reinforced or shifted with every leader’s action. While it starts with the mission and values, it’s built and evolves with behavior. When times are tough, sales are stagnant/declining, there is high turnover…first we look outside to find out if there are changes that would affect us. And, it is easy to look far and wide to make it not our fault these problems exist - it’s just the way things are. Its from this place that disruption can take us by surprise and set our companies farther behind. Starting the conversation…

• What if we acknowledged current industry trends, declining trends within our organization as something can influence?
• Organizational culture plays a role in our ability to take risk, see opportunity, and achieve goals.

Host: Jessica Dewell    Cohost: Tanya Bourque

What you will hear:

Blunt and kind at the same time? Culture matchup required for successful business partnerships.

Articulate the way we do business (internally and externally).

Communication styles … generationally.

Mentors and training shape the way we approach our work.

Scrutinize processes for timelessness (work in today’s world) or if it requires change (because affected by changes).

Reactions to good intentions - planning for growth.

Resources (and priorities) vary from startup to established business.

Harder to get a true snapshot in the middle of growth and change.

Watch and document how roles change over time.

Set the expectation experience internally and externally.

“This is the way we’ve always done it” … comes out of time of change and feels safe. It takes new/different hardship to  illuminate the need to change.  (By the way, keeping our vision the way it’s always done is what we must hang on to.)

The separation between leadership levels is smaller in smaller companies.

Use of resources - not necessarily multiple hats, but how to do-more with the strengths of our people.

Challenge: are we making the most of what we have. Find our assumptions: here’s how it’s always been done.

We want to contribute. Our identity in our role matters - and can get in the way of reaching goals.

Questions to ask to look at our (and our employees) contribution potential.

Tips to keep ideas going to completion.

The process of thinking through an idea - to present it and prioritize when it will be done.

Nothing is free. The skills people bring add value, give them value.

When we reach the point of no return - we’ve invested too much and we can only go forward.

Notable & Quotable:

Jessica Dewell: Sometimes we only laugh and breathe - we can only control our own actions.

Tanya Bourque: Culture communication style can make or break a business relationship.

Jessica Dewell: Position the culture to know how a company solves problems, communicates, and effectiveness.

Tanya Bourque: I’m a millennial, but I’m different than most. I think its in how I trained.

Jessica Dewell: Articulate vision, mission, values more important than ever before.

Jessica Dewell: How many times do we forget to get our idea out of our head so someone else can meet us where we are at?

Jessica Dewell: Acknowledge fear exists from lack of or mis communication.

Tanya Bourque: Not changing, will not see success.

Tanya Bourque: There is an ecosystem of people that help each other out in start ups. They solve problems together as a community.

Jessica Dewell: With so much investment in people that companies make, it makes sense to figure out what else they can bring to the organization.

Tanya Bourque: Prove the idea works.

Resources:

97% of all businesses in the US are small businesses (under 500 employees).

Own It, by Meridith Elliott Powell

 

Tags: organization structure, trends, influence, startup business, established business, thrive, culture fit, business to business, challenge assumptions, growth, plan, innovation, busy, safety, dependability, resourcefulness, responsibility, team building, think time, gig society