What Is a Healthy Culture?

Patrick Lencioni, in his book The Advantage, makes a distinction between smart and healthy organizations.  Smart organizations are characterized as strategic, focusing much of their energy on marketing, finance, and technology.   He characterizes healthy organizations as having minimal politics, high morale, high productivity, and low turnover. Lencioni further asserts that the difference between successful and mediocre companies is not how smart they are but how healthy they are.  

We would like to extend Lencioni’s thinking to define a healthy culture. But, before identifying the key components of a healthy culture, we would first like to describe what makes a culture unhealthy. Here are a few descriptors of unhealthy cultures.

Drama.  Unhealthy cultures seem to excel in drama.  Employees tend to be fixated on telling stories about what is wrong with the company, conflicts are frequent between departments and individuals who operate on their own personal agendas, and energy is spent defending or attacking policies and people.  At the GM Tonawanda Engine Plant, we described the toxic culture that existed in terms of industrial warfare and depression. These are clear examples of a culture built on drama.

Politics.  We often hear the phrase “It’s who you know, not what you know.”  Using personal relationships to enhance one’s career, manipulating the system to gain advantage, and internal competition rather than organizational alignment are all examples of cultures that thrive on politics.

Bureaucracy.  This is a concept that is often misunderstood.  Most people think of bureaucracy as dysfunctional, slowing down decision making and compartmentalizing the major functions of an organization.  In its worst form, we agree with this description. Bureaucracy is not inherently bad. It can provide stability, clarity of roles and responsivities and a rational process for making decisions.  However, organizations that put rules and procedures ahead of focusing on employee and customer needs are examples of unhealthy cultures.

Marginalizing People.  Treating people as a variable expense, defining and engineering jobs based on tasks to be performed or on workflow efficiencies while ignoring a job’s toll on workers, and treating people as tools rather than partners in the quest for success are examples of unhealthy cultures.

Winner Take All.  This mentality is particularly troublesome in our economy today.  The differential in pay and status between executives who manage companies and the average worker has been growing.  Workers who do not share in or feel to have been a part of the financial success of the company are often dissonant and have little loyalty to the company or its goals.

By contrast, healthy cultures are characterized by minimal levels of drama, politics, and the negative effects of bureaucracy.  They are characterized by a leadership that believes in the potential of all its employees to contribute to the success of the organization.  Healthy cultures focus human energy not on drama, politics, or rules and procedures but instead on treating employees as players on a team, capable of accomplishing extraordinary results.  Healthy cultures lead to high morale, high productivity, the capability to overcome obstacles by problem solving, a can-do attitude, and the unleashing of positive energy to help the organization succeed.  We would like to offer some characteristics of a healthy culture with examples of how it can make a difference.

Creating Clarity.  Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman’s book, First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, describes extensive research by the Gallup organization on what makes supervisors successful.  Gallup’s number-one finding was clarity of expectations. We believe that healthy cultures create clarity.  In saving the GM Tonawanda Engine Plant from closure, Don Rust approached managers and workers with a clear message:  they needed to create a plan that included the commitment of every worker if it was to succeed.  With union leaders who represented workers and his management team representing GM, Rust was able to create a clear plan to save the plant.  He communicated this plan to the president of GM in clear and simple terms. The plan worked, and the plant not only got two new engines to build but became the most productive engine plant in the company.

Believing in People.  We have often alluded to the Golden Rule of Management as a guiding principle of a healthy culture.  It is one thing to talk about having faith in people to work toward organizational goals, to trust that people will give their best effort to help the company accomplish its mission, and to treat them with dignity by honoring their contributions toward the success of the organization, but putting these principles into action is difficult.  At the Cutco Corporation, three generations of leaders not only believed in their people but demonstrated their belief every day by listening to their employees, addressing their needs, and sharing in the company’s success. They practiced the Golden Rule of Management and invited their workers to partner with management in supporting its employee- and customer-centric culture.

Teamwork.  There is an old saying that there is no “I” in teamwork.  Healthy cultures work hard to emphasize “we” rather than “I.”  Teams may have star players, but star players cannot carry a team.  Alan Weinstein has worked in hospital settings, coaching physicians to invest time and effort in teamwork to accomplish better medical outcomes.   Take for example a surgical team operating on a patient. The team is headed by a gifted surgeon, but this surgeon needs a team to be successful. Several team members have a role to play in supporting the surgeon to make the surgery successful.  In a healthy culture, the surgeon treats each team member as a partner, giving them full credit for the role they play in the success of the surgery. All too often, surgeons see themselves as the center of importance, treating the support team as subservient and often belittling them for not being as dedicated to the patient as they are.  These surgeons create a culture based on status and exclusion, not teamwork. We would not want to be the patient in an operating room in this unhealthy culture.

Creating Alignment.  Organizational conflict has received a lot of attention in the management literature.  It is the natural outcome of diverse roles and interests that different groups or departments pursue.  In a healthy culture, leadership will identify common goals that all organizational players can identify with. In the GM Tonawanda Engine Plant, Don Rust and his management team invited the union to help plan the turnaround of the plant.  Because there was trust, what was once conflict changed into a cooperative venture with all players working toward the same objective.  

Cultivating a Winning Attitude.  Vince Lombardi once wrote, “Confidence is contagious and so is lack of confidence, and the customer will recognize both.”  We believe that a winning attitude is essential to a healthy culture. Knowing that you are participating on a team or in an organization that is successful will boost energy and ensure continued effort toward sustainable results.  Success needs to be visible, shared, and celebrated if it is to be sustained. Cutco Corporation employees believe in the products they build and the company’s ability to market and sell those products. They share in Cutco’s success through communication, celebration, and receiving a portion of the company’s profits.

In summary, healthy cultures promote clarity, a belief in people, teamwork, alignment of interests, and a winning attitude They are built on listening and addressing the needs of all organization players and customers.  Drama, politics, and overuse of rules and procedures are symptoms of unhealthy cultures that divert human energy and diminish organizational success.