Authentic businesses?

Suzanne Mercier - Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Can businesses be authentic or an imposter?

A business is simply a collection of people.  It reflects the people who work within it, particularly its leaders and senior management.  If those people are authentic, that's how the business will be perceived.  If those leaders hide who they really are - if they experience the feeling of not being good enough and the impulse to hide how they see themselves from the world - that will play out within the organisation.  Leaders influence culture and culture influences the way in which employees carry out their responsibilities.  I'm talking about values - the real values that are encompassed in the Unwritten Ground Rules articulated by Steve Simpson.

A few years ago, I worked with a very large multi-national organisation, delivering business strategy, marketing strategy and customer service training for a large segment of the business.  During the time of my relationship, the organisation employed expensive big name consultants to help them define their culture.  An offsite strategy session delivered a list of values that were taken on as the culture of the business and widely promoted.  In fact, senior management were so enamoured of the values that they used them to name the different conference rooms.  So we would meet in "integrity" or in "service".  The problem was that staff made fun of the room names and snorted when I asked them what the values meant to them.  That was my first encounter with UGRs.  The values were way off and meant nothing to the people who worked there.  They were more easily able to articulate how things were really done around there and it had nothing to do with the values.    This organisation - through its senior leaders and managers - was an imposter.  They were portraying themselves as something they were not.

Imposter organisations may look great from the outside - that's the carefully constructed mask we're seeing.  We don't get that sense of depth and integrity that comes from true authenticity.

What do you think?  I'd love to hear.
All the very best
Suzanne