The Art of Building A Strong Culture

Posted April 4, 2010 By David Irvine and has no comments yet.

Learning to build a culture is an art, and you can master building a culture if you are willing to invest the time and energy. The practice of any art, whether it’s music, carpentry, or athletics, requires four practices: First is discipline. To become good at something, you must undertake it in a disciplined way. Anything you do only if “you’re in the mood,” may be a nice hobby, but you’ll never become a master at it.

The second practice is concentration. Paradoxically, what you need to concentrate on to build a culture – which is about connection to others – is self-reflection: connection with yourself. If you want a better culture where you live or work start by developing a mediation practice or a practice of mindfulness. Make it a daily discipline  to go inside and listen to your needs, desires, and values. Make time for a spiritual discipline to pray, or create a community of people around you to share your life with, or  simply take time to think and reflect. Make any one of these practices a concentrated discipline, and you will see a significant change in your culture in a matter of weeks.

The third practice is patience. Anyone who has ever tried to master an art knows that patience is necessary to achieve anything. Patience is difficult in a society that demands instant gratification and speed, but without patience and perseverance, mastery remains illusive. To build a culture we must be patient with ourselves and with others. There is no prescription or quick fix to a better culture. An apprentice in carpentry must learn to be patient while learning to plane wood. A piano student begins by practicing scales. The apprentice in the art of culture learns by being still and listening to the voice inside and then learning to overcome self-centeredness, realizing that building a better culture begins with building a better you.

A fourth practice is that you must make it a priority in your life. When you make culture – the environment and key relationships in your life – a priority and then create concentrated practices around connecting with yourself and others while maintaining patience, you won’t just have a better culture, a better environment to live and work in. You’ll have a better life.

What practices do you incorporate into your life and how does these practices impact the environments where you live and work?

Categories: Cultural Transformation, Leadership and Culture, Organizational Culture
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Gratitude in a Culture of Complaint

Posted February 7, 2010 By David Irvine and has no comments yet.

Below is a letter to the editor I submitted to Canada’s Macleans magazine this week in response to an article in the February 8th edition.

Nancy MacDonald (The War On The Civil Service, Feb 8., 2010) makes an important contribution to the current public service reality in Canada. As an organizational development consultant in the both the public and private arenas, I, too, have witnessed the discouragement that is rampant in the public sector. Yet, in spite of often working under a lack of political and societal support, I have seen mediocrity transformed into greatness at every level of the public service. Make no mistake: the majority of civil servants care. They care about their work, and they care about Canada. I have met many leaders in government who are more than qualified to work in the private sector for a greater financial return, but, driven by public service values, will not waver in their determination to serve the public good. In this culture of complaint, it’s too easy to take for granted the quality of life that the citizens of Canada experience largely because of the quality of our public service. Maybe our problem is that most of us have simply had it too easy. If we care about Canada, we better care about our civil servants. Whether it’s the clerk behind the desk where we pick up our passport, or the RCMP officer who is laying her life on the line so we can sleep at night, or a social service agent tirelessly attending to the needs of neglected children, it would do each of us good to replace entitlement with gratitude. And in the process, we would be doing our part to contribute to a more civil society. Our focus, after all, on “those people,” is a defense against our own responsibility. There is a strong correlation between well-performing democracies and economics and a strong public service. History informs us of this.

Categories: Cultural Transformation, Leadership and Culture, Organizational Culture
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Cultural Transformation

Posted October 11, 2009 By David Irvine and has no comments yet.

The focus of my work is inspiring, guiding, and supporting leaders at all levels to build strong organizational cultures. The leaders I speak with these days are not just interested in keeping people. They are committed to keeping people engaged. I define engagement as the desire by employees to go the extra mile to help their organization succeed and deem their work meaningful and fulfilling. So… just how do you get people engaged?

Culture and employee engagement is a topic for continual learning. First, engagement is not something you “get from” your organization. It’s something you bring to your organization. The people who tend to score low on a Hewitt engagement survey will tend to score low no matter what environment they work in. On the other hand, employees who say they are highly engaged will likely be highly engaged no matter where they work. That’s why the first principle of engagement is person accountability. Accountability – the ability to be counted on – means that engagement begins with ownership. When you create a place where all blame is viewed as a waste of time and where people can be counted on, there is always high, focused energy, because there is trust.

The second principle of engagement is authenticity. Authenticity is about creating a place where people don’t have to leave who they are at the door. You can be who you are when you come to work. The needs of the organization are integrated with the desires of the soul. Authenticity means the values, dreams, talents, and passion of all stakeholders are moving into alignment. The laminated Value Statements have come down from the walls and are lived. Employees have a deep commitment to the organization because they know that the organization has a deep commitment to them. Engagement is an inside job. It comes through conversation: about what matters most to you. When you are finding and expressing your passion, living your highest aspirations, and fulfilling your dreams  in the service of others, you will be engaged. Engagement is about energy. When the energy flows from a depth within you to the world around you, and then returns to its source within you, you are engaged. Nobody has to motive you.  It flows naturally.

Fostering this kind of culture is akin to being a gardener. It can’t be legislated, controlled, motivated, or coerced.  No plants ever grow better because you demand that they do so or because you threaten them. Plants grow only when they have the right conditions and are given proper care. Creating the space and providing the proper nourishment for plants – and people as well – is a matter of continual investigation and vigilance.

These are a few my thoughts about organizational culture and employee engagement. I’d love to know yours.

Categories: Cultural Transformation
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