Asleep at the wheel?

With the IMF predicting that the UK economy’s performance in 2023 will be the worst in the G20, even worse than Russia, now is a really bad time for the UK’s premier business organisation, the CBI, to be dealing with scandal. Since both the UK government and the Labour party have stopped meeting with the CBI, the majority of the membership of 190,000 businesses has lost its representation with government and its influence on policy. Hopefully this will be a temporary situation and the CBI will put its house in order quickly. As Andy Wood, CEO of Adnams, noted “Reputations take decades to build, and moments to destroy.”

The costs of an uncaring culture

Organisations today are under constant scrutiny by the media and other bodies, and the larger or more influential the organisation, the more extreme the reaction is if it is seen to be behaving in an unacceptable way. The reaction becomes outrage when organisations have a responsibility to communities, for example people in the case of water companies and the police, businesses in the case of the CBI. The costs of allowing a toxic or uncaring culture to persist are huge when the details become public.

How to fix culture problems quickly

Although it is yet another critical task for busy leaders, they need to be vigilant and look out for culture problems that could damage their organisations. One approach to getting ahead of potential problems is to involve the workforce and canvas their opinions in a non-invasive way. Using Organisational Sensemaking^TM, Tensense provides a quick and ongoing way of assessing the mood of the people about how the organisation is doing.

Photo by Alexandre Boucher on Unsplash