Observations

So how do we behave in an unfamiliar environment or one that appears to have no set rules? How do we follow the culture, know the boundries and work out what is acceptable and what is not?
These were the questions that I was asking myself this week. So I started to oserve situations and see what happens.
What do we do?
We observe, we look at how others behave towards each other. We see who is talking to whom, whose words are listened to and who makes the final decisions.
The first day on a new job quickly becomes about the personalities in the office rather than the skill of the job. We search out where the "gossip" station is and from whom we need to get essential information about the working of the office from.
The culture of an organisation does seem to start from the top. If the CEO arrives at the office each day dressed in a tatty T shirt and dirty jeans and expects the staff to be smart and well dressed it will not be long before he loses credibility and any authority his salary and title expect.
My recent experience is the small business set up by a charismatic person, by setting up this small business gave him great credibility within the wider industry. Eventually he bowed to pressure and took a step back from running the business, making the great sweep of handing management over to another. However, he really was still in charge as every decision with the small business was cleared with him. New managers were scared to make decisions without first running it past him for his approval. At the same time as there were no rules or boundries within the business employees started to look to him for clues on the culture of the organisation. How to speak to others. Who to speak to within the business,whos words to listen to and who to ignore. How to treat customers and how to behave.
Needless to say that as the person in charge cared less and less about the business and the people in it so did the employees. The way he dressed and behaved became the norm, and then suddenly he turns around and wonders why the business is failing. To suddenly start making demands on staff to pull themselves up will not work unless it comes from the top down.
If you are the head of any organisation people will look up to you and seek your approval or mimic your behaviour. You need to be aware of this and then act appropriately.
So it is human nature to learn by observing others. We have all done it, that is one of the ways we learned as children. We didn't need to experience everything to learn how to behave socially, generally we just observe how other do it. So... is it any wonder things get really screwed up sometimes?
Well that's my thought for today.....catch you next time.