If your organizational culture isn’t changing for the best, it’s because your leadership doesn’t want it to change.

When something bad happens at work, we can try to find out who did it and punish them.

One way to prevent the same thing from happening again is to find out how they did the deed and put a new control in place.

Going one step further, we can ask why they did it. What pressured them? What belief did they hold? Then we can change our processes to alleviate that pressure, and we can articulate our values to change that belief – with all employees.

The last and most important question to ask is “What is it about our culture that led to this failure?”

Addressing only the first three questions will not solve the real problem. Only the last answer leads to an effective solution.

Business leaders have no problem repeating the financial targets at every meeting. From this behavior, people know it’s important.

The same leaders hesitate to repeat that these goals must be met the right way. And from that behavior…

Your boss really wants to make their numbers this quarter. They are willing to do, and ask you to do, just about anything to get there.

But what they want even more, often without knowing it, is to have a good reputation and a good job for the next few decades. Humans are bad at long-term thinking.

The best thing you can do for your boss is first to help them understand their vested interest in the long-term. Then you can offer solutions for the coming quarter.

Culture is a shortcut.

When employees don’t have all the necessary information to accomplish their work, when they need to make educated guesses, culture provides the answers.

We don’t have to spend a lot of time explaining how to do something, or why. Culture knows.

Which is why the quality of our culture is so important.

{Warning: This post is a little jocular}

Here are a few technologies that exist today:

• Microphones
• Speakers
• Email
• Text messages
• Internet
• Cloud storage
• Bluetooth
• ChatGPT

With these technologies, you can create a workplace where risks could be mitigated in real time.

Imagine an in-person meeting with a branch manager and her staff. The facilities manager explains the need to hire a window washer for the external windows on the second and third floor of the building. The branch manager exclaims that her brother-in-law has a window washing business and would certainly give them a deal. Everyone seems to think this is a great idea.

The conversation is recorded, analyzed by a ChatGPT-like tool, which runs it against the company policies. An email or a text is immediately sent to all attendees, highlighting possible violation of the conflict of interests and procurement policies. Even better, the alert could be sent over the speakers in the meeting room.

Very creepy, I know. And unlikely to survive the scrutiny of current privacy laws.

But think how helpful it would be from a compliance perspective, especially for bigger risks related to corruption, global trade, product safety, etc.

Until such a day is possible (if even desirable), we need to sustain our efforts around communications, education, and ethical culture.