The Counter-Culture Inside Your Business

There is possibly a counter-culture inside your business that keeps your business from growing.

Practically every business I visit has this. It’s the first thing I look for. Why?

Because the derivation of the word culture means to till. You know, like Farmer John. Till the soil. 

So, when he plants his corn or wheat, it will grow.

But if someone comes along and puts chemicals into Farmer John’s soil, ummm...that would be counter to that culture. And Farmer John will be pissed. He looks out at what should be a healthy abundance of wheat, and it isn't happening.

Enter your business.

If you feel things in your business are not quite hopping, not quite expanding, or are sluggish despite all your efforts to get it really rocking and rolling, I can tell you with total certainty there are employees or staff that are sitting on unspoken disagreements that are counter to it growing.

And I’m talking about things that are unknown.

Because of course, it’s axiomatic if these things were known, there wouldn’t be a problem with growth.

It’s kind of like when you get in your car and start driving, and you feel something is not quite right. Something is creating resistance. And then you have one of those slap-your-head moments, and you see your parking brake was on. It’s possibly a simplistic example, but we’ve all done this, yet the realization of what’s stopping you is immediate.

It’s in that realization that there was something counter, that you get relief.

Because you now know what it is and can fix it.

What exactly is this counter-culture in your business?

It’s unhandled disagreements that grow in the “accepted culture” of the group.

It’s just uncanny. Like, this is the way it is here.

And these disagreements grow there because that’s the way the culture is.

“Ahhh...just must be a bad batch of wheat this year.”

No. That’s a total non-confront of why that wheat is not your best crop ever.

So, when I get hired to help a company whose growth is sluggish, I go prospecting.

For disagreements.

And they’re always there. Always.

I go talk to the staff in Marketing, and they are nattering about Sales. I go talk to the Project Management people, and they’re nattering about Marketing. I go talk to the crew in the Sales Department, and they have unvoiced disagreements about the guys in Marketing, Project Management, and Senior Management.

Did I say parking brake?

It always amazes me that these departments are either just down the hallway or on the second floor yet you’d think they were in Bangladesh. People sit there with disagreements and dissension that honest-to-god keeps the place from flying.

Listen: The word agree means you get a flow. Look at it. If you agree to go to lunch, you get a flow. You go to lunch. Simple. If you disagree you don’t get a flow. You get a stopped flow. If you want to have sex with your spouse and they don't agree, there’s no flow tonight. When you agree, you get a flow.

Client agrees, things move forward. Client disagrees, the motion forward is stopped.

Income or sales are flows. I can always tell when a company’s income or sales are sluggish that there are disagreements on the line. And it’s not “Some Department” or some “Situation over in Marketing.”

Situations and departments are not sentient things.

People can start, change, or stop things.

Executives often get reasonable and don't roll their sleeves up when someone is acting as a stop.

Think of a person right now who you have a disagreement with or they with you.

More often than not if you think of talking to this person, you will first meet resistance in your mind. You look at talking to Bill, you get ridge instead of a flow, and you dismiss the idea of talking to Bill. Maybe later. Your boss walks in later...

“Hey Jason, have you talked to Bill? You guys need to get this sorted out.”

“Ahhhh...no...I’ve been busy. But I will.”

Liar liar, pants on fire. Your nose is longer than a telephone wire.

Dis-is a prefix. It means to remove.

So, when you disagree you remove the flow.

In its place is the parking brake of resistance.

This is what gets missed.

I can turn sales around in short order by just getting all of those on sales lines to ante-up and get their disagreements off their chest. Sales not closing = no flow = a disagreement on the line.

If a person secretly disagrees, they become counter to the very culture you are trying to grow.

And anyone who has a disagreement usually thinks they are right!

Are they going to going to initiate talking to someone they have a disagreement with if they think that person or department is wrong? N-o, spells No.

Jason wasn’t exactly doing handsprings down the hallway to talk with Bill.

So, everyone works really hard and tries to drive this thing forward, and they’re all busy, and they're your best people...but...the project or sale has a counter-effort to your effort to drive it home.

And don’t spin off on this.

I'm not talking about some big Kumbaya campfire culture where everything is rosy.

I'm also not saying in a productive business culture there are not differences of opinion. Having different opinions and ideas are where creative minds meet, and new ideas are born.

I'm talking about unspoken disagreements that lay dormant in the group and like a virus that's got everyone puzzled. They slow, if not stop, forward motion and expansion.

The solution to this usually takes a good bit of confronting and a real healthy dose of objectivity to handle it. Most of these points of disagreement are things that if mediated, can get ironed out.

They stay un-ironed out because people sit in their cubicles and insist on being right.

Being right is the last breath the person holds before he goes down for the count.

Ask anyone who didn’t close a sale and see if he owns it or puts it on the client.

Ask anyone who went through a messy divorce.

Who was right? And how did that work out?

There’s nothing right about someone being counter to the culture you are in.

There’s everything right about having a viewpoint to help your business grow.

You just need to understand the difference.

One fosters growth.

The other kills the wheat.