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Experiment. Fail. Learn. Grow.
Since we’re discussing in this section the importance of culture in delivering on your ambition, let’s start with a few questions:
- How does your company culture encourage employees to experiment with new ideas and approaches?
- How does your company culture frame failure — as a setback or a learning opportunity?
- What are your company culture’s non-negotiable values or principles, and how do they guide your decisions?
- How do you reinforce the connection between company culture and achieving business goals?
- How do you model courage as a leader to reinforce its value within your organization?
- How do you, as a leader, align your personal values with the company culture you want to build?
- What cultural practices ensure that employees feel safe speaking up with unconventional or challenging ideas
These questions are based on my years of work in business culture. Over the years, I’ve collected thousands of notes, which I can now curate with the help of ChatGPT for my writing purposes.
The point is simple:
How free do you feel to explore exciting opportunities for your company without being held back by bad managers, rigid rules, slow decision-making, bureaucracy, and what else may hold you back?
Let me give you one example. I recently discussed this with a business leader about his CEO. This is a real example, and it happens often.
This CEO is known for reviewing all documents presented before discussing them in the executive meeting.
That means that every document discussed was already ‘approved’ by the CEO. Otherwise, it would not have made it to the meeting.
Leaders sometimes even refer to their conversations with the CEO to ‘gain support.’
The leader told me that he once did not pre-discuss it. The CEO was surprised but not amused and ‘clarified’ that he could not support him if he did not pre-discuss it.
So he decided to pre-discuss everything going forward, just like everyone else on the committee.
