Attributes of Cynical and High Service/Quality Cultures“I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.” “Work sucks, but I need the bucks.” “I’d rather be fishing/sailing/golfing/…”

Surveys show that these phrases express the feelings of a growing number of frontline performers today. Too often these contagious feelings spread throughout a team or organization. How many of these attributes of cynical cultures are found in your workplace:

  1. High “snicker factor” about values
  2. Declining engagement levels
  3. Rising absenteeism
  4. Higher turnover
  5. Declining Customer satisfaction
  6. Resistance to change
  7. Low trust and teamwork
  8. Decline in quality
  9. Lower health and safety

Earlier this year I reconnected with Paul Levesque. Back in the days of The Achieve Group, Paul was a key developer of our Three Rings of Perceived Value model. He was also part of the team that developed Achieve’s implementation framework documented in Firing on All Cylinders: The Service/Quality System for High-Powered Corporate Performance.

In June, he and I delivered a joint session with a Client around leading a high service/quality culture. Paul’s books, articles, and workshops evolving and advancing our earlier work were extremely powerful.

To reverse and re-energize cynical cultures Paul has developed a step-by-step methodology built around these key attributes of high service/quality cultures:

  1. Work is made to feel more like play.
  2. There’s a single, primary objective with an external focus.
  3. Employees voluntarily embrace involvement and ownership.

You can find more on these approaches and how they fit into our updated implementation framework in my June webcast Leading a Peak Performance Culture.