I first heard this advice years ago when I was still in the role of Organization Development Specialist at Regina Public Library.
In hindsight, I don’t think I appreciated what an amazing job that was to have right at the start of my library career.
Our Director (still the same guy all these years later) was in on my interview which rarely happens – even for management positions. When I started, I got toured around to all branches by the Deputy Director and had monthly breakfast meetings with her after that.
The position was unique in a few ways – I was the only MLIS-holding librarian reporting to a non-librarian (our HR manager) in our entire organization and I was also the only in-scope employee in an otherwise completely out-of-scope unit.
(I often think about how I could go to a union meeting on a Monday night to hear CUPE’s position on an issue like pensions then go to our daily huddle in HR the next morning and hear management’s take on the same topic.)
I had a range of responsibilities including all aspects of staff training & development, working on change management initiatives, proposing and participating in bringing innovative ideas & services to the library, being chosen as one of only half a dozen new librarians from across Canada to attend the CLA’s “8 Rs HR Summit”, organizing new staff orientations and chairing our annual Staff Development Day committee.
There was also the nebulous “Organizational Culture” aspect of the job where I tried to build a culture of engagement, transparency and fun as outlined in the Powerpoint I presented in my interview…
Being at the start of my career, I was a bit naive (one coworker still teases about how idealistic I was – guilty as charged!) and I think I didn’t realise the enormity of the hurdles that I would encounter trying to create a strong supportive culture even from people who had *created* the position and said that was what they wanted.
I’ll always remember being in a car with that same Deputy Director going to one of our breakfast meetings and her looking over at a stop light and saying “You know, Jason, workplaces aren’t supposed to be fun.”
She knew I was a big fan of tech companies and I think we had a misunderstanding – she thought I was talking about nap pods and trampolines in the hallways like they famously had at Google and Facebook at the time.
I wasn’t saying that at all – I was saying that, at its core, culture comes from your people.
And, as summed up so well in that quote I heard in a webinar, you can have all the strategic plans and brand booklets and dealing with change workshops and performance reviews (blech!) and other traditional elements of organizations up to and including direct management instructions.
But, at the end of the day, the ultimate thing that will define your organization is its culture.
And as much as we want to think that everyone is a leader who helps define the culture (which is true to a degree), it is the people in the highest levels who set the tone for the entire organization by the range of their impact.
From an organizational culture perspective, you have to ask: Do those people have emotional intelligence? Do they inspire trust and loyalty? Do they demonstrate good judgement, strong decision-making ability, and a modicum of common sense?
Because one of the biggest misconceptions about managers is that they are the smartest or best people for the job.
This is often not the case at all.
Instead, they might have gotten the job because they are the one least likely to question their supervisors. Or who are willing to put in 80-hour weeks and forego meals to show how “dedicated” they are. Or on the flip side, who slide into a position but turn down good ideas because doing that would actually create work. Or who reinforce their superior’s need to feel important by constantly consulting them. Or because they’ve been a longtime employee and it would look bad to not hire them. Or who are forced to take a job because they got fired from another position and may be bitter. Or who see those below them on the hierarchy as lesser beings instead of trying to help raise up everyone.
(Full disclosure: As much as I’d like to believe my interview was a slam dunk, I suspect that at least a small part of what got me hired initially was because I took initiative to plan monthly pub nights for Regina and area librarians that both my Director and Deputy Director attended at different times and I think it showed that I was creative, a self-starter and someone was interested in bringing people together – exactly the skills they wanted for their Organization Development Specialist position! Heck, it maybe even showed that I was fun!) 😉
Anyhow, what is often missed in this blender of positive and negative qualities that managers exhibit is that all of this serves to create the organizational culture – for good or for bad.
And that is often the organization’s loss as they tread water or get caught up in minutia or infighting or waste money in various ways (I’ve seen situations where they would spend $500 to save $50 just to make a point!) or have low morale and high turnover instead of becoming a forward-thinking, engaged, team-oriented group with a strongly defined organizational culture.
