Your company has been through a tough time. A merger, an acquisition, a spate of layoffs, a cut in the training budget, or anything that has caused less-than positive attitudes to prevail. You’re hearing grumblings around the water cooler. People are surfing the Web classifieds for job openings. Needless to say, you’re not getting 8 hours of creative, inspired, top-quality work out of every one of your people.
There is a cost to negativity. It’s not just the turnover and the chiseling at the productive time. It also saps the amount of energy people put into making sure their jobs are done right, and the amount of effort spent making sure decisions are made in the best interests of the company.
It is hard for an individual person to break out of a negative pattern, even with years of therapy. It is even harder for a corporate culture to turn from cynical and negative to forward-thinking and positive. There is significantly more inertia involved.
Freight trains don’t turn on dimes. It takes time, energy and persistence to change direction. Energy applied at the beginning of a turn matters exponentially more than energy applied later.
Here are some concrete things you can do:
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