Recognize This! – Your values and your culture can sustain you through horrific loss.
What would you do if you were tapped to be the CEO of an organization that had just lost every single member of the top two tiers of leadership in a plane crash?
Culture can carry your organization through great tragedy. And it can help you become even more successful. But sometimes changing that culture is necessary in the process.
Case in point: Wilhelmsen, an international shipping company in Scandinavia. Ingar Skaug stepped into just this situation (read the full story in Forbes). Wisely, for a year he stepped back and observed closely as employees went through the necessary shock and grieving process. Then he worked with senior leaders to set and define the values and direction of the organization going forward.
But then even more wisely, he took the steps necessary to ensure those values and cultural expectations were followed by:
1) Purposefully inculcating every employee in the new values, mission and strategy
2) Removing those who did not want to comply with the new approach
3) Measuring results by linking company culture to profitability
The bottom-line lesson Skaug learned is the same that Gallup reported in 2010: a strong, values-driven culture (and the resulting employee engagement) drives financial success, not the other way around:
Could your culture sustain your organization if tragedy struck?