What kind of emphasis does your company put on culture? These days, most companies at least make the effort to present the trappings of company culture. You can picture it now: technicolor open work spaces, nap pods, a chef on-site, fully stocked break room snacks, beers, and ping-pong tables—the works. But, those funhouse amenities are often little more than a facade, obscuring a toxic culture that lies beneath.
Mark McClain refers to cultures like those as “pseudocultures,” designed to attract new employees and impress potential investors and customers, but aren’t representative of a successful company. By attempting to give employees a superficial idea of what they want, these cultures neglect to give their people what they actually need: a purpose, a product to believe in, and lived values to help guide them.
Real organizational cultures are reflections of how companies treat people and actually do things, like create useful products. Real leaders understand we must bury, once and for all, the notion that companies can make people happy by offering pseudo anything. Until that happens, firms will keep chasing the wrong rabbits down the wrong holes and wasting human capital.
The goal of this assessment is to illuminate potential problems with your current company culture while helping real leaders get focused on the things that matter most. Are you ready?
Let’s get started!