Don’t kill your culture
When you want a certain kind of culture in your organization, it’s a delicate balancing act. If you push too hard for your culture, you may deny creativity by forcing people down one path. At ACT 1, Howroyd views a good culture as a book that everyone is working from. That means there are core elements to the plot everyone understands — the need to grow personally and professionally and the desire for creativity, for example — but people aren’t always reading it at the same speed or at the same time.
“I think that leaders need to appreciate the opportunity they have to promote an evergreen environment,” she says. “For me, that does-n’t mean keeping people on the same page, it means keeping them within the same book. So, region to region, my organization may be on different pages of the same book, but the important thing for me is that we are all following the same processes, we all have the same tools and we all are able to respond at the local customer level.”
Basically, if you are able to set the tone for a creative culture and you see that your company is coming up with creative products, you can’t be too nitpicky if the leader of your financial group does-n’t have as lively of a leadership style as the head of your marketing group.
“In my organization, I truly don’t mind having different leadership styles exist,” Howroyd says. “One of the things I’ve found in 30 years of building my business is that even when we deal with large corporations, those companies will have different cultures and leadership styles not only from country to country but from business department to business department. … So differences in leadership style doesn’t have to be an issue in my company; it can be something that is just a part of how we experience diversity.”
That isn’t denying the fact that there can be negative cultures, but if your cultural tenets are growth and creativity and you aren’t experiencing those things, you’ll know pretty quickly. On the occasions that that happens, Howroyd says you have to circle back with people and go over the book again. And that doesn’t mean you point the blame at them.
“I look first of all at their results,” she says. “Given that we hired the right people and we’ve resourced them well, the conversation becomes, ‘What do we need to do differently?’ not, ‘What’s wrong with you?’”
The approach of circling back to talk about your processes and straightforward goals, instead of focusing negative attention on one person, will encourage them to look for gaps rather than sulk.
“When you approach it that way, you have your direct reports more engaged in being researchers or equally engaged in being researchers as they are in being the information providers,” Howroyd says. “Their teams work better with them and every single time this will bring a better result than just going after people to find out what’s wrong with them.”
