Great corporate culture is a key to sustainable business. Yet corporate culture is often a thinly-veiled front for a corporate cult.
When a group of people have excessive admiration for, and willingness to follow, a particular person or belief, it’s a cult. We all know about drinking the koolaid, right?
Think about the following business situations and the corporate cult vs culture driving them:
- A company refuses to see glaring customer issues. Leaders make decisions that are focused on capturing newer, bigger clients, to the detriment of current customer delivery times and quality. These same leaders sing the chorus of a customer-focused corporate culture.
- An organization is mesmerized by a CEO’s vision. So much so that everyone overlooks his continuous habit of deceiving employees and customers. This company believes integrity is at the heart of its corporate culture.
- An executive protects certain pets, regardless of their performance. By the way, these pets are the people who always agree and never question said executive. Anyone who does is, well, fired. Yep, that’s more cult than culture.
We’ve all experienced the cults inside the cultures. And if you haven’t, well, consider yourself blessed.
What continues to blow me away is the power of these cults to draw smart professionals into a highly manipulated reality.
A Corporate Cult in Point
I once worked with a company that has one of the biggest opportunities I’ve seen. Emerging market with a hockey stick growth curve, best available product, solid knowledge, large customers (and I mean monsters) coming on board with astounding contracts. Sounds too good to be true, right?
It was.
The company has one over-arching flaw. The founder had created an Emperor Has No Clothes kinda corporate culture, or cult. Reality was manipulated to support whatever tangent the founder was on. Often the reality changed from hour to hour, meeting to meeting. Regardless of how it impacted customers, employees or the organization at large. BTW – yes, the founder is a sociopath. But that’s another post.
For now – let’s talk about this cult.
- Customers were receiving poor quality product, months late. Yet the founder chose to focus on the newest and bigger customers, refusing to believe that the company had any issues. The company has no repeat customer business and no references. With over 3000 customers, not one would be a reference. Uh huh. That’s quite a unique corporate culture, now isn’t it?
- The founder literally lied about the company to everyone that he speaks to or with. Consistently. Stories change day by day to match the founder’s immediate goal. AND NO ONE SAID A WORD.
- Smart people get sucked into this cult, accepting the programming bit by bit as they attempt to be the one who can “fix it all.” I should know, I was one of the people. This corporate culture hooked my fix-it self big time. Until I woke up and walked away, thanks to even more shocking behaviors we won’t go into here.
Corporate Cults Aren’t Culture
So why this example? Because there are too many cults that have similar personas. Executives that deceive (stretching the truth is NOT marketing and sales,) pets that get special treatment, customers that are poorly served, reality manipulated by the mesmerizing folks in the company.
There are also too many of us who let the cults continue. I’ll admit to being one of those people after this last experience. I was so caught up in the culture, I lost touch with my own reality.
I began to accept the manipulation and deceit as, well, okay. Accepted the pets and untouchables as a given and attempted to work around them. Heck, I even started to doubt myself as the founder masterfully manipulated my mind. Which goes to prove how powerfully these cults and cult leaders really are. I’m a licensed trainer of all types of mind science and techniques… how did he do that to me? Because I’m human, like all of us.
I lost myself to the cult. And I didn’t know it until I was so deep into the cult, I was stressed out and sick from the situation. I wasn’t the only one. Every single person in the company knew the founder was a nutcase. Every one talked about it, talked about how they needed to get out of there. But we all hung on.
Such is the power of a charismatic and oh-so-pathological leader.
I’m focusing on learning to see the truth, trusting what I see and forgetting my need to fix everything.
In the end, sometimes, a cult is just a cult and your best option is to walk away.
