What About the Weeds? Toxic Culture, Part I

“It takes a lot of courage to engage in a culture change project, whether you feel like your organization is toxic or not. The truth is toxicity is like a terrible, invasive weed. No matter how often you think you pull those pesky tendrils out, you find yourself looking at them again.”

—Libby Wagner

In MIT/Sloan’s recent Management Review, “Why Every Leader Needs to Worry about Toxic Culture,” the authors noted the “Toxic Five Attributes That Poison Corporate Culture in the Eyes of Employees.”

When I read, 

1. Disrespectful

2. Non-Inclusive

3. Unethical

4. Cutthroat

5. Abusive

My first response was, “duh?”

I know, I know, sarcasm is risky. What’s really great about this publication is that they did their research and examined data from multiple sources, the primary one being GlassDoor, an online review site where you can post a review of a company. They combed through more than one thousand entries and more than 50 companies to search for patterns and themes.

The very good news is that I’m glad people are talking about toxicity as a condition that isn’t just something that happens when a company is overtly terrible. Toxic culture happens, with the best of intentions, because we aren’t paying attention. Toxicity lives in a place that doesn’t talk about what’s really going on.

When leaders come to work with me on a culture project, they are often of two kinds: they are going through some big change and want to maintain the strong culture they’ve created, or they think they are in trouble. Consider a merger or acquisition, a new senior leader, or a significant change in their market or industry. Consider a desire for growth or expansion and how that can impact a culture that’s been tight-knit, creative, or family-like. Their culture has worked for them and helped them succeed, so they don’t want to lose what’s good about it, even when they know things are going to change.

The other organization is feeling the pain and consequence of what I like to call “organizational drag”—the things that happen that get in the way or prevent you from succeeding and thriving in your organization in the way you want: turnover, lack of loyalty, interpersonal strife, low engagement or morale, ineffective systems or processes.

It takes a lot of courage to engage in a culture change project, whether you feel like your organization is toxic or not. The truth is toxicity is like a terrible, invasive weed. No matter how often you think you pull those pesky tendrils out, you find yourself looking at them again. How much does gossip, back-biting, miscommunication, and lack of trust cost companies? Billions of dollars per year. If it’s true that an engaged employee (one who’s happy and stays and contributes to the growth of the team) out-performs their peers by 400%, then you can understand why the five toxic attributes don’t surprise me at all.

I attended a gardening course at Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Ireland, a few years ago. The class was called “No Dig Gardening [1],” offered by the guru himself, Charles Dowding. Over 20+ years, Dowding, going against all conventional knowledge of gardening and growing, has amassed evidence that you can get more yield (aka greater profitability) from your garden if you don’t pull the weeds. Read that again: do not pull out the weeds. Dowding says that the intricate underground system is upset by the shock of weed pulling, which creates more weeds. Instead, simply cover over the weeds with a thick layer of compost (the good, nourishing stuff) and plant from there, vegetables, herbs, and flowers get super happy, thrive, and hang out together in friendly ways. No, really. Before we wandered out to the incredible gardens at Ballymaloe, we watched slide after slide comparing the no-dig gardens and their veggies to the dig/weed gardens. Every single time, the no-dig had more, bigger, better-looking vegetables.

Don’t get lost in this metaphor: I’m not saying that you don’t address the toxic elements of your culture, but what I am saying is that you must create the compost. You must focus your time and energy on what will help the good stuff grow. Our typical diagnostic way of dealing with organizations in the West is this: find the problem, eradicate it. Find what hurts, fix it. This will give you only temporary relief. Your garden might look tidy for a few months . . . but then there you are, weedy again. In Dowding’s gardens, the good stuff literally smothers the invasive weeds, transforming them into—you guessed it—additional compost! Think about your own garden. Okay, just get out there and spend one back-breaking weekend dealing with your weeds, digging in your soil . . . wait a minute, didn’t you do that last year? A few months ago? Doesn’t it sometimes feel like, in your organization, you’re dealing with the same issues over and over? The same solutions don’t seem to have sticking power?

Compost, my friends. That’s the answer. [2]

[1] Charles Dowding. Check him out: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/

[2] Look forward to next month’s column for Part II!