Bonus Episode 5: Organizational Culture

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Hi, this is Steven McLain. This is The Finance Leadership podcast. And this is bonus Step episode number five. today. Talking about our organizational culture gets in the way way crisis. Those who have worked for an organization with a strong, well defined culture and easily believe set of shared values. I know that it can carry us through adversity and through tough times it defines who we are and what we're going to achieve. I served in the United States Army for well over 20 years. It was a career for me. The U. S armed forces has a strong organizational culture of being ready for the next conflict in the military. We train. We trained hard and we train every day. What do you think happened when the cove in 19 crisis hit America and then started to hit the armed forces while the reality of social distancing and the need for close training clashed? An organization with a strong organizational culture who loves to train, who loves to work closely together clashed with this new concept of social distancing. The army still wanted to train. It's what the army does, but also the force must be protected you must separate our soldiers in order to protect them in order to save them in order to have them ready for the next conflict. However, leaders struggled with this because of the strong organizational culture that the army has. We train, we work closely together. We don't social distance. That's what an army does in the army. You see your people every day, no matter what. There is no calling in sick. You have to get up every day to report in. You report in to your duty place. You work with your people every day. If you're sick, then you go see a doctor. You get evaluated and they decide what to do with you. But you don't just stay home. It's not part of our culture. It's not part of our set of values. We go in every day. It's this culture that insurers at the Army winds this nation's wars. Now the U. S. Army has two separate and then not see each other. And what do you think happened? There's a clash between that strong organizational culture and the need for social distancing. It was tough for some leaders to see that it's still tough It's still tough to process that you're not going to see your team every day that you have to separate, that you have to get away from each other in order to protect each other and the question that always comes up. But we have training in order to prepare for the next conflict. You gotta train. That's what an army does. But how do you protect the force and not train? How do you protect the force and be ready for the next conflict if you can't train? That's the question in the problem that Army leadership is facing and continues to face a strong culture and a powerful set of values helps us to achieve excellence. Helps us tow win under the conditions the culture was based on. A military force needs to train and must operate closely together. But how do you adapt in extraordinary times? What happens when you have to go against that strong organizational culture and you have to go against your gut and you must act to preserve your workforce? This concept is gonna triggers for a while. How do you overcome the group? Think of our own strong culture to adapt to a different type of crisis. This is going to plague us for a very long time. This concept of once you are faced with a different type of crisis or a different type of emergency. How do you go against what you've been taught and how you've been trained? How you've been brought up to an organization that we have to train and be ready. But now you've got to get away from each other. You have to operate with a different view. How do you overcome that? I think this is gonna be something that we're gonna be thinking about for years to come and something that's gonna have to be built in to the culture and the values of all organizations going forward. So that's the leadership prompt that I want to leave you with This week is, as you build a strong organizational culture and a very strong, shared set of values. How do you prevent that strong culture from stopping you to act based on the emergency in a crisis you're dealing with right now? How do you do that? How do you evaluate that? How do you bake something in? How do you build in tools or process into the culture that allows you to strip away everything that you believe in that you've been taught so you can act in the best way forward to protect everyone, to protect the organization, to protect the workforce. That is something we're gonna have to continue to be thinking about in assessing going forward. Just another reminder Season number two is going to debut next week on April 28th Really looking forward to bringing you the first episode. The topic of that first episode is gonna be overcoming adversity and becoming more resilient. I see a new type of leader emerging from this situation that we've been dealing with now for the last couple of months. I believe that new type of leader is gonna be forward thinking this person's gonna be more agile, more creative, more flexible, and one who is going to be extremely person focused and long term oriented. So really looking forward to bringing that episode to you and another reminder that the intent and goal of this podcast is to bring leadership development to the finance and accounting profession because I believe that we are very technically savvy, but very poor and leadership skills. I do tend to believe that managers and finance accounting tend to micromanage and only focus on the numbers instead of the team. And I just want to bring solid leadership topics to you every week so you could develop your leadership skills. You can develop your team and you start thinking about your team members instead of just the bottom line, because I think if you put your team members first, the work flow will improve and you're gonna be able to do a lot more, and you just don't realize it. So looking forward to bringing your season number two and now I'm asking, you all go to great things and critics.