Introduction

You receive the invite in your inbox:

‘Please attend compulsory training to learn more about our new values and behaviours, which will transform how we work with each other, and our clients, to take our relationships and organisation to the next level’.

You do a silent eye roll. Not one of these again. The email looks suspiciously like one you received a few years ago.

You get that this training has an important purpose, but WOW are you bored and tired of it. It’s usually a one-off day crammed with facts, stats, death by PowerPoint slides and a constant barrage of information overload. You get into small groups and write on sticky notes about the culture of your organisation.

‘And please,’ the facilitators say, ‘we want you to feel safe enough to be completely honest’. Oh, sure …

Then the same old exercises follow. Intended to map out where the culture should be. Our ‘future desired state,’ they call it. What does that even mean? It sounds like a presidential address.

If you’re lucky, the facilitator injects some fun in the day. If not, you’re checking your emails and Instagram every five minutes for a hit of dopamine.

The biggest problem with all this fanfare is that you know there will be little follow-up after the event. In fact, the only plus point is the sandwiches and muffins (if they’re not stale).

Fast forward a few months and posters with words like ‘honesty’ and ‘respect’ – the company’s new values and behaviours – start popping up all over the office walls, kitchen mugs and even on the back doors of the toilets for quiet moments of reflection. The posters pop with bright infographics and inspiring quotes from people who have been dead for over 50 years.

Are you serious?

Like this is going to motivate you into action and revolutionise how you work. The values are never measured. No one is held accountable. The worst thing is that the leaders in the organisation don’t even live true to what they’re proposing. There’s no ‘honesty’ or ‘respect’.

This scenario is all too common in workplaces today, throughout the world, in every industry, service and discipline. This is what the vast majority of your employees think when you – as a leader – send out that cut-and-pasted invite to yet another ‘culture change program’.

Organisations constantly seek ways to improve results and perform better, often packaged as a new strategy and external team training day, a set of new values, coffee cups and cupcakes. Needless to say, this has little to no effect on anything. (Except perhaps our waistlines.)