As millennials continue to enter the workforce, the culture of organizations will continue to become the last great competitive advantage in the marketplace. Simon Sinek wrote in Start With Why: How Great Leaders inspire Everyone to Take Action:
"Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left."
Culture is important and leaders will find it worth their while to curate a culture that attracts the talent they need to compete. This can be done both formally (i.e. branding) or informally (i.e. conversations in the hallway). I am a big believer in the later. But how can we change a culture through conversations in the hallway? How can an organization start moving towards the last great competitive advantage in the marketplace?
Alvesson and Sveningsson wrote in their article entitled Managers Doing Leadership: The Extra-Ordinarization of the Mundane:
"A lot of ‘leadership’ (e.g. what people in an organization see as leadership) is fairly mundane, differing little from what other people do, at least at a behavioral level...Most employees in organizations would probably have a hard time convincing other people that they do something special by listening, chatting or being cheerful. It seems as though the construction of mundane activities as extraordinary occurs exclusively when managers are performing the activities. The acts are, in a sense, non-exclusive, even trivial. The formal position of the person performing them is not, because of the symbolic meaning attached to managers and leadership".
Alvesson and Sveningsson found through listening, chatting, and being cheerful, managers and leaders are able to dramatically impact their workplace. This is how to start transforming a culture, this is how organizations can start to achieve the competitive advantage of culture.
"Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left."
Culture is important and leaders will find it worth their while to curate a culture that attracts the talent they need to compete. This can be done both formally (i.e. branding) or informally (i.e. conversations in the hallway). I am a big believer in the later. But how can we change a culture through conversations in the hallway? How can an organization start moving towards the last great competitive advantage in the marketplace?
Alvesson and Sveningsson wrote in their article entitled Managers Doing Leadership: The Extra-Ordinarization of the Mundane:
"A lot of ‘leadership’ (e.g. what people in an organization see as leadership) is fairly mundane, differing little from what other people do, at least at a behavioral level...Most employees in organizations would probably have a hard time convincing other people that they do something special by listening, chatting or being cheerful. It seems as though the construction of mundane activities as extraordinary occurs exclusively when managers are performing the activities. The acts are, in a sense, non-exclusive, even trivial. The formal position of the person performing them is not, because of the symbolic meaning attached to managers and leadership".
Alvesson and Sveningsson found through listening, chatting, and being cheerful, managers and leaders are able to dramatically impact their workplace. This is how to start transforming a culture, this is how organizations can start to achieve the competitive advantage of culture.