Creating a great culture is fundamentally about removing obstacles. I know that doesn’t sound sexy or exciting, but that is the real work of improving your culture: getting rid of the obstacles inside your organization that get in the way of success and reaching your potential.
Mediocre cultures ignore this concept. In mediocre cultures, you die by 1,000 cuts:
- Your data systems don’t talk to each other, which makes it impossible to run your AI experiment
- Your colleagues in other departments agree to help you out, but then frequently let you down because they get overwhelmed to their own departmental commitments
- People share information with you when you ask, but by then it’s often too late and you missed the opportunity to take action.
- Leadership is hesitant to show unfinished work to members or customers, which means you don’t get their feedback until after you’ve launched the new product, resulting in costly revisions down the road.
All of this gets in the way of success, and mediocre cultures chalk it up to the cost of doing business. They are too busy to take the time to remove these obstacles, or they feel the change is too hard. Sadly, that approach leads to mediocre results and good people leaving.
Great cultures, on the other hand, are laser focused on removing the obstacles that get in the way of success. When they sense the friction that comes from obstacles like these, they figure out how to change a process, a structure, or a technology to overcome the obstacle.
And it’s honestly not that hard. It takes some effort, for sure, but the organizations with the really good cultures are not led by leaders with superhuman abilities or some special sixth sense. They simply are focused on doing the work of continuously aligning culture and success.
So if you want a great culture, here’s a simple challenge for you: remove 7 obstacles in 2025.
Brainstorm a list of obstacles that exist in your current culture, and then prioritize it to the top 7 that you feel you can move the needle on this year. They don’t all need to be heavy lifts (in fact, a mix of quick wins and heavy lifts is the best). Just pick things that you know generate frustration internally and make it harder to succeed.
Then come up with a plan for removing the obstacle. This will require making some changes, either to an existing process, or part of your organizational structure, or the way you use software or technology. Here’s an example:
OBSTACLE: Helping people in other departments is rare. There is a lot of suspicion when requests come in (why can’t you do it yourself? This isn’t my job!). People prefer to keep their heads down and focus on their own department’s work.
IMPACT: Balls get dropped and opportunities are missed because the full set of expertise in your staff is not being applied to every aspect of the work. Quality of work product is lower than it should be.
REMOVAL: Up your game with your project management processes and software. When everyone has visibility into the work flows of everyone else, the collaboration requests can be more fine-tuned (like not asking a colleague for help when you know they’re under a big deadline).
RESULTS: Your members/customers are wowed by the event you just produced, noticing that the quality of the speakers was better than any other event they’ve attended, which was made possible by your staff’s ability to tap into the wide range of expertise among their colleagues in different departments.
Good job! Now just do that six more times this year. For the record, upping your project management game is a relatively heavy lift—you don’t need six more big projects like that. But knock as many of the 7 obstacles off as you can this year. At the end of the year, do a pulse check with your team—are they seeing the benefit of the obstacle removals? If yes, then keep going. If no, don’t fret—just work on some new approaches to removing the obstacles.
Why 7? Because 7 gives you room for a good mix of quick wins and heavy lifts. More than 7, and you’ll have a hard time remembering them all (that’s why our phone numbers were 7 digits back in the dial-phone era). And in our culture design work with clients, almost invariably when they identify a number of plays in their playbook to start with, it’s in the 5 to 10 range. Heck, there’s even research that suggests the average number of ingredients in recipes all over the world is around 8. If you want to maintain good momentum with your culture improvement efforts, work in batches of about 7.
Will your culture be completely transformed by removing 7 obstacles? Probably not, but great cultures aren’t looking for that. They’re looking for continuous improvement, and you should too. And what if you’re not in charge and wouldn’t be able to push through a new project management system, for example? Then find some other obstacle removal strategies that ARE within your span of control. Everything you do—no matter where you sit in the organization—will contribute to a better culture. The more people—at every level—who commit to removing 7 obstacles, the faster your culture will improve, and whoever changes their culture the fastest in today’s environment will win.
If you want some help in prioritizing and action planning, set up a call with me to discuss. We have consulting, coaching, and (coming soon) a digital platform for helping you knock out those obstacles.