Leading Workplace Change™

I recently saw the documentary movie – “Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, and was enamored how this movie so unexpectedly summarizes a powerful aspect of American popular and corporate culture.  The movie filters out the American “win-at-all-costs” characteristic as one of the underlying drivers for rampant steroid use in sports today.  We see this characteristic as a strategic cultural driver in many American companies as well and it can be hard to manage.

Then I read Bob Longino’s interview with the film’s director, Chris Bell in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (6/13/08).  I realized director Bell’s perspective that you need rules and they need to be reinforced in sports as similar to how the “win-at-all-costs” culture driver needs to be harnessed in companies.  In new fields or markets when the game has not been clearly defined, there are great opportunities and usually a lack of rules – think of the de-regulation of the energy business in the late 1990’s and early 2000′s.  Some individuals and companies were solely out for personal gain – they saw the energy trading business as a “gravy train and they did not want to do anything to upset the train for themselves.”

Harnessing the hustler instincts of the American persona is what good leaders should be about – providing ground rules, incentives and adherence to an over-riding mission and values.  The culture of a company does not develop in a vacuum and director Bell’s sub-title to his movie – “*The Side Effects of Being American” reminds us that we are all part of the great American dream and having rules to play by can help us all.

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