I speak to many people in corporate positions who are really well paid. They’ve got MBAs and well qualified, and they’ve got a ton of status in their roles. And my question is, like, why are you looking to leave? And the number one thing that comes up is culture.

Things have changed in the company. They don’t believe that the changes are for the good, and it’s just a clash. And they decide that they just can’t do it anymore. I’ve just come back from a four day training in Brisbane where we trained eight new business consultants to enter the local business market.

And in the training room, we had CEOs,  ex MDs.

We had people who were serial entrepreneurs that had multiple businesses.

And a big reason for changes kept on coming up time and time again was this whole thing about culture. I want to share a couple of these stories and see if they resonate with what’s happening in your world at the moment. Like there was an ex CEO, and he was working for a large family business and the family business got sold and straight away, big culture changes. And he got to a point where he’s just like, I can’t do this anymore.

Well, how about this? This is a really amazing story. Ex managing director, he had negotiated with staff, quite a big staff, six hundred k worth of bonuses because there were all these strikes happening, and the business interruption was costing the corporation an absolute fortune. So they negotiated these great bonuses.

Everyone was happy. Productivity went through the roof. All the strikes, no longer. Everyone was getting on great, except when new leadership came in, and they saw six hundred ks in the p and l.

And in the cost cutting measure, they said, well, what’s that for? Well, that’s gone. We don’t need that. Now in a heartbeat, all the industrial action came back.

All the productivity went down the sink, and all the goodwill that had been built up over years of negotiating, completely evaporated in in one cost cutting move. Another example, there was a senior exec there, in the training room, and he told me about a situation where they had a really strong point of difference against them and the competitors. Same thing again. New new restructure came through, and and suddenly that point of difference with their with their customer base, just the focus went completely away from all of that.

And what it meant is that whole point of difference, gone. So guess what? they’re competing on now because they don’t have that point of difference. It’s just a race to the bottom on price. So these are culture changes that really affects people.

And I think when people ask themselves the tough questions of, am I happy doing what I’m doing? Am I still excited about it? Do I feel like I’m making a difference?

And ultimately, does what I do actually matter? These are the sorts of things that a culture will either have people behaving into or behaving out of. So my question to you is, what are the sorts of culture changes that you’re seeing, for better, for worse?

How are incentives being managed in your business in terms of for performance? How is that working in your workplace? Has it changed? Does it still work for you?

Do people still feel motivated about that? Or what about the whole team engagement side of things? Is there a high care factor? Or is it just some sort of HR tick box thing that you have to sort of jump through?

And same thing about values. Have you seen values changing? You know for yourself, you live with a set of values and you do your best to align those values with the people that you’re working with. How’s that changed?

If it has, let me know. I’d love to hear from you. So that’s my thoughts around culture. I think it’s one of those magical things.

It’s quite hard to articulate. When you’ve got it, everyone feels great, but it can change just in a heartbeat. Change a leader. Change a culture.

Let me know what’s happening in your workplace. Love to hear from you!