<!–:en–>People – The most misunderstood part of corporate culture<!–:–><!–:fr–>La dimension humaine – L’aspect le plus mal compris de la culture d’entreprise<!–:–>

Terry Thompson, Surrey, BC, CYBF Mentor, tesh@shaw.ca

Managing Corporate Culture article series

HAVING THE RIGHT PEOPLE IN THE RIGHT PLACES – This topic not only has the most significant impact on corporate culture, it is also often the most misunderstood and poorly handled by CEO’s and managers.

Despite rising to a senior management position early in life (at age 30), I did not take the correct approach to this subject until my early 50s.

Further, I did not see any of the other senior managers or CEOs take the ‘people’ side seriously enough for those 20 years either. It was not until I significantly upgraded my personal knowledge and skills and materially changed my attitude and behaviour towards the importance of this subject that I was able to achieve the corporate culture goals I was striving for.

Experience has taught me that corporate performance is measured by:

1. Profitability
2. Employee engagement
3. Customer satisfaction
4. Personal life balance (i.e. hours working vs personal / family time)
5. Fun at work
6. Exit valuation of the corporation

My prior articles (click here for complete list) focused on the CEO’s approach, vision and values and corporate culture first, not because they are more important than the ‘people’ aspect, but because if you cannot commit to and take the time to effectively deal with those aspects first you will not get for with the ‘people’ aspect.

Where I, other CEOs and senior managers had failed in the past was that we did not take the time to gain the skills we needed to manage the ‘people’ aspect. Plus, we did not spend the proper amount of time and effort required to:

1. Properly determine the key personnel organization structure of our company (particularly at a management position level)
2. Properly assess the people in the key positions in order to determine if they were the right people and, if so, were self-sufficient in those roles
3. Properly recruit, screen and hire the right people for the right positions at all levels of the company

In my opinion, a great manager is one that builds positive corporate culture by simply becoming the master of the three functions listed above. Perfecting these functions will also provide a significant competitive differentiator for the managers’ companies.

The next articles will provide ‘bite-size’ tips on how to become an expert in ‘HAVING THE RIGHT PEOPLE IN THE RIGHT PLACES’.

Should have any questions or feedback regarding the content of this article please email me (Terry Thompson) at tesh@shaw.ca. ©