As part of a distributed workforce that travels heavily for client work, it’s hard for the team I’m part of to develop daily chemistry. Over time we’ve all come together and get along well together. New colleagues are integrated fairly well as we try to make efforts to travel to meet, visit, chat and learn about them. Older colleagues come together whenever possible to confirm the bonds previously built and make sure everything is as it should be. We do this because culture matters.
Culture is also really hard. Teams can build their own culture to an extent around helping each other and ensuring that everyone comes together. But team culture is different from organizational culture which is impacted by management, how decisions are communicated and the environment built and created by organizational infrastructure (back office, HR, written policies, etc).
The end of the year is always a time that I start thinking about culture more than most other times. US holidays means that teams are covering for each other more often with vacations. Yearly financials (re: organizational profitability and success) are coming to a close (which absolutely impact culture). Stress levels tend to start to rise as everyone tries to wrap up their annual objectives and projects. Culture is both in a state of flux at a time like this as well as a necessary component of making it through the day sometimes.
All this to say: think about how you can positively impact your culture. A positive culture doesn’t mean that people aren’t working to the brink of possibility or that hard conversations aren’t happening. A positive culture means that there is a support organization around to help prevent personal and organizational failures from occurring. A positive culture means that a business is actively encouraging collaboration and communication between groups. All of this enhances the business.
It’s hard to do but necessary.
Filed under: culture, organization, success, team
