It’s Culture Crusher Friday!
Samantha started a new job as the manager of a department of 5 employees. During her first week her boss asked her to write goals for her department. In order to make sure there was alignment between her departmental goals and the goals of the organization she asked her boss if he would send her the organizations goals. His response, “Oh, I don’t have time to write those down. I’ll just take the goals you come up with and will stick them in a binder with all of the other departmental goals. That way, we’ll have a book that makes up all the goals of the organization.”
Samantha, I’m sorry but your boss is just lazy. And you know what? Lazy bosses breed lazy employees because if the boss doesn’t care then why should anyone else?
Nothing screams, ‘welcome to your new company, we don’t have alignment and don’t plan on coming up with it any time soon’ like a boss not taking the time to think through and write down the organizational goals. Being a good leader and creating a passionate, motivated, engaged workforce is about being able to tell the story of where you want to go and who you want to be as an organization. Don’t mess that up!
Editors Note: Culture Crushers will be posted every Friday. Let us know if you have a doozie to share.
culturefanatics.wordpress.com 
Here is my doozie. How about big orgs who cascade annual goals/visions out to people way late into the year or never, but yet expect themt to be aligned on the vision of the company. The townhall isn’t enough. It takes cascading, hallway meetings, meetings after meetings and lots of chatter to get people to understand how the work they do fits in the broader picture of the org!
Good Post Marisa. Keep em coming.
Ben,
I couldn’t agree more that saying something once doesn’t make it stick. There is no such thing as over communicating when it comes to sharing organizational goals!
Thanks for your feedback.
Ah yet… the binder that never gets looked at again, the banner on the wall that gathers dust. Seen ’em all! Writing things down is a necessary first step, but a cultural commitment to actually achieving goals is priceless.