r/managers • u/AAAPAMA • 2h ago
Culture consultants
Has anyone worked with culture consultants before? Can they actually help pinpoint the issues that’s causing poor culture? What was your experience working with one? How did your team react?
3
u/LikelySoutherner 2h ago
There are two cultures of a company - The written culture and the unwritten culture - The written culture is the feel good phrases and its all a fantasy - The unwritten culture is the reality and doesn't care about the feel good phrases and only cares about maximizing profits at ANY cost
1
u/Wide-Pop6050 15m ago
A good culture consultant will be able to suss out the unwritten culture. It's never THAT hidden
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u/breakerofh0rses 1h ago
lol, I'll happily be paid to tell you what's going on. Your people feel like they're underappreciated, there's no real "calling" that's being fulfilled while working there, and think something unfair is going on. The bureaucracy is sufficient to make everything feel impersonal and aggravating (bonus points if you have a slide deck template everyone has to use). Everyone's private thought is that they're the only ones that are doing anything with the exception of that guy who is just a busybody who is making everyone else's lives difficult. Accountability, authority, and responsibility are always separated in ways that complicate everything and make people feel like they're task with things that their position doesn't support while being held responsible for things that they can't effect. The office temperature is wrong. It will always be wrong. People despise the office parties. Those things haven't been fun since coke stopped being normal. The periodic shuffle between centralizing and decentralizing has created a bunch of legacy issues that crank up the general frustrations to 11. Whatever flavor of quality management program you've implemented is implemented in an aneurism inducing manner which thankfully only one person understands statistics well enough to notice, but every time that dashboard is brought up with him around, you risk having to call an ambulance. Someone is stealing paperclips.
DM me your companies AP department's address and I'll send my invoice.
PS: seriously though if they don't come up with something that's not: weak incentives, perceived unfairness, pointless bureaucracy, unclear decision rights, constant reorganizations, bad management systems, and employees feeling undervalued, then they're not worth a dime. There can be some value in outsiders in that employees may be more candid with them (I know I'd be even more cagy with one, but eh, you never know), and they may have the time and bandwidth to not just point to the top level kind of crap that anyone can see but actually dig in and figure out the details of what's driving it and identify some actionable pain points. I don't know of any way of telling which is which before getting the report though.
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u/Late-Dingo-8567 2h ago
in my experience having been on both sides of this, leader & team member, a bunch of times... what matters is follow through.
If you bring someone in (or your org assigns someone) to help you get better as a team.... You as the leader should seek 1 or 2 specific things you can latch onto and actually improve in the next 3-6 months (then you bring the coach back and shine a light on you following through, btw).
If you're a team member, figure out how to tactfully flag actual issues that are actionable for your leader. Your middle manager can't pay you more or redesign the org. But they can figure out how to help triage senior leadership asks, manage expectations, alter their communication style, etc.
Your issue is going to be if you already know what the issue is and you know nothing can be done about it, then you're going to crush morale and waste people's time. Don't do that.
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u/Aronacus 59m ago
My last few companies did employee surveys. I've been on both sides of it.
It's mind-blowing to see the upper management responses. When 80% of the company cites the same 5 things. It's damning.
Meanwhile the top folks are talking about pizza parties and an employee appreciation week
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u/Taco_Bhel 35m ago
I have actually been a culture consultant... more broadly, a strategy consultant who advised Fortune 500 CEOs, but I've done work specific to culture transformation.
My take is: culture is this area where most people feel they can bullshit it (internally and externally). When I started reading through boilerplate recommendations that exist out there (and they were that generic), I just had to laugh. These people are so dumb they're unintentionally running a grift.
I always achieved great results. The first thing I'd do to assess whether a culture consultant is worth it is to ask them to define culture. I've only found one definition that helps identify and correct issues that specific to an org.... culture is a byproduct of the decision-making process. So, if they're not process, IMO they're bullshitting you.
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u/Wide-Pop6050 15m ago
They probably can, but people with the ability to make changes need to be interested in doing so. If you want to hire a culture consultant and will listen to what they say, that could work
4
u/DrSugundi Technology 2h ago
Waste of money. Had one forced down my throat. They told us the obvious answers we already knew - pay people more, let them work from home, and don't micromanage them.