Ep 107 The Surprising Way to Fix a Bad Workplace

What if I told you that changing your organization's culture doesn't require a complete overhaul? It actually starts with something much, much smaller, and that's climate. Here's how you've been approaching this wrong, and trust me, it is so counterintuitive. You change culture by not trying to change culture.

There's something else you need to focus on, actually. If you're a senior leader, you've probably experienced this. You know your organizational culture needs to change. Maybe there's toxicity, low engagement, or resistance to innovation.

You've tried the company-wide initiatives, the new value statements, the town halls. Nothing seems to stick. Here's the problem. Culture feels too big.

It feels too big for everybody. It's abstract. It's too entrenched to change. And you're right.

It actually is. And that's why the approach that you've likely been taking isn't working. And that's why the approach is wrong. Here's the real opportunity for you and the team that you support.

See, you don't need to change the entire culture at once. You need to change the climate. The climate is the immediate sphere of influence around you and your team. When you shift the climate through empowerment and positive leadership, you create a ripple effect that transforms the broader culture over time.

The way I like to think of it is like a bullseye or an archery target. And at the middle is you. And then the first concentric ring, that's actually now your immediate team, your direct reports, whether they be VPs, directors, managers, whatever that actually looks like for your particular environment. And today, I'm going to show you exactly how you do this using the framework I call the Ordered Chaos Climate First Culture Change Framework.

Let me share a story from work with a manufacturing company based in Mexico. The CEO came to me super frustrated. They invested so heavily in culture change programs. They were trying to do all of the things.

They were doing the town halls. They were doing the vision statements. They were doing the mission statements. They were sharing all of this information, the documentation.

They were putting it up in the forays, all of those things. But three years later, nothing actually had improved. Their employee engagement was still down. The employee scores for satisfaction still down.

It just revealed the same problems. Just basically lack of trust, poor communication, really siloed departments. Well, here's what we discovered. They were actually trying to change culture from the top down with policies and programs.

But actually culture doesn work that way And it a misconception actually Culture is the accumulated effect of thousands of daily interactions the climate people experience in their immediate teams So we shifted the strategy. Instead of another company-wide initiative, we actually focused on empowering middle managers, your managers of the frontline, your directors. And from there, we want to create positive climates within their teams. Within the six months, employee engagement scores improved by as much as 40% in those teams.

And within a year, other departments were asking how to replicate it. The culture began to shift, but not through mandates or programs, but through contagion. So let me break down the framework. The culture versus climate.

The key distinction. First, understand the difference. Culture is the overall personality of your organization, the values, the beliefs and behaviors that define it. It's big, it's slow moving, and it's super hard to change directly, which is why you're paying attention to this.

Climate is like the local weather, the immediate atmosphere within your team or department or business unit. It's shaped by the daily attitudes, the behaviors and the interactions. But here's the key. Climate is within your control.

If you're watching this, you have direct reports. You have a direct sphere of influence that you can manage. You can dictate how people communicate the values and how we are going to treat each other, how we make decisions, all of those things. So it's actually a message of empowerment.

despite the culture and this big nebulous ambiguous thing guess what you can show up to work and if you are leading in a position of leadership you can have direct impact over climate so here are three core elements one assess your current climate start by understanding the climate you're creating right now maybe you're using you'll use surveys or one-on-ones or focus groups for that matter and some of the questions do people feel trusted do they feel empowered is it safe to take risks and share ideas?

And is communication open? What's a level of collaboration versus competition? And here's the key, folks. Be brutally honest.

If you're a founder or C-suite executive, your team might not tell you the truth unless you create genuine psychological safety for this feedback. And that's not easy. The second part, once you've done your size up, is you need to cultivate autonomy and empowerment. This is really the heart of climate change in terms of the workplace.

Empowerment means giving people the autonomy, the authority, and the ownership over Thank you calculate risks and learn from failures Empowering leaders do four things consistently They encourage open communication and shared decision participatory They provide support resources and guidance without micromanaging. They foster psychological safety where people can speak up without fear of persecution or anything, provided it's done in a respectful manner. And they invest in growth through coaching, mentoring, and development opportunities.

The fifth one, which is kind of a bonus, is they implement the Order to Chaos 131 framework. One problem, three options, one recommendation. I talk ad nauseum in other videos and episodes. When you empower your team, they become more engaged, innovative, and resilient.

They also start empowering others, creating that ripple effect. And again, I'll submit to you that you want to start small, but think systematic. That's the third part. You're not going to change everything in a day.

And here's the actual paradox though. You change the culture by not trying to change a culture, like I said. Instead, make the small, consistent changes within your own immediate sphere of influence. Set specific achievable goals.

Break them into incremental steps. Celebrate the small wins at that micro level and encourage experimentation and innovation and employ this order to chaos principle that I call communicate relentlessly. Open up the floodgates for communication, folks. Communication builds trust.

Trust in turn builds cohesion. Cohesion builds outcomes, all of the things. And here's the thing, just like anything else, small changes compound. You may not even notice them in a week or two or even a month, but over time, they permeate throughout the entire organization, influencing other teams and leaders.

And I promise you, other peers will be looking at you and say, hey, wow, everyone wants to work for you. What's up with that? Like, tell me the secret sauce. Are you doing strong mandates?

Are you holding them accountable to metrics? Are you showing tough love, all that? It's like, no, actually, I'm not. I'm supporting them.

I'm creating psychological safety on the teams, and I'm starting with my immediate direct reports. Now, let me address three myths that prevent leaders just like you from actually taking action. And these are BS myths, to be honest. Well, I need executive buy-in to change culture.

Not true. You need executive buy-in to change policies or systems. But, oh my gosh, you can absolutely change climate within your team right now, regardless of what's happening above you. Start there.

The second myth, also BS, culture change takes years. years. Yeah transforming an entire organization culture takes time but you can shift the climate in your own team in weeks or months And that climate shift if spread across the organization creates that momentum for broader cultural transformation Here's the third myth. Daryl, some people are just toxic.

I can't change them. Absolutely true. You can't change individuals who don't want to change, but you can change the climate around them. When you create an empowering, positive climate, toxic behaviors either diminish because they don't have any fuel.

right? There's no fuel. There's no alliance building there that, you know, misery loves company, all of those kinds of things. And folks become so obviously out of place that they self correct or honestly self select out.

And the beautiful part of it is they'll do it themselves. Now, yeah, they're going to go away and they're going to blame you and oh, this is BS and all, you know, this whole thing. That's fine. That's an issue, not an issue.

So let's recap. Changing organizational culture feels overwhelming because it is if you try to do it all at once. Instead, focus on climate, the immediate atmosphere within your sphere of influence. So your immediate team.

And so you want to assess your current climate honestly. So that's your size up. You want to cultivate empowerment through trust, autonomy, and psychological safety. Implement the one, three, one, and start small with incremental changes that compound over time.

And when you shift climate, you create that ripple effect that transforms culture from the inside out. So this week, I would recommend that you have one-on-one conversations with each of your direct reports. Ask them two questions. What's one thing I could do to make you feel more empowered in your work?

And what's one barrier preventing you from doing your best work? Warning, warning, warning. Folks may look at you like a monkey looking at a wristwatch because this may not be what they're used to in one-on-ones. But I promise you, if you start to dig below the surface, you will start to get the true motivation for folks, what they actually need and treat each person differently because it's not a one size fits all.

and while they're talking about it, listen, actively listen, restate. What I'm hearing you say is this, don't defend, don't explain, just listen, take some notes and then pick the one thing that you can change immediately and do it. That's how climate change begins and you start to build trust. If you want to go deeper on empowering leadership and creating positive climates, absolutely reach out, comment below, guide and I'll send you my order to chaos principles or send me a message, whatever it takes for me to be able to help you.

And remember, you can't change culture by trying to change culture. You change culture by changing climate. And that starts with you. Start small, but start today.