Taking Accountability For Your Culture

In a rather sensational New York Times op-ed article entitled, “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith severely criticized the company’s deteriorating culture, citing it as the reason for his resignation. Specifically, Smith alleged that Goldman Sachs’ organizational culture had shifted over the past several years from fostering ethical client-driven attitudes and behaviors to promoting unethical revenue-obsessed ways of thinking and acting.

Regardless of what you think of Greg Smith and his open resignation letter, Goldman Sachs now has the opportunity and challenge to demonstrate that its culture is effective, not destructive; ethical, not lacking in moral fiber; and focused on creating value for its clients, not mismanaging them. In reality, it’s an opportunity and challenge that faces every company, every day. Your organization’s culture is always working, either for you or against you.

Leaders have to take accountability for the organizational cultures they create. When they don’t, their cultures begin working against them and their people and their customers and their shareholders and the larger communities in which they operate. Leaders create cultures and cultures produce results—either desired or undesired. It’s just that simple. The most effective culture is a Culture of Accountability, where people take accountability for thinking and acting in ways that will produce the desired results. Leaders who create and sustain a Culture of Accountability have learned, often the hard way, that either you will manage your culture or your culture will manage you.

To learn more about how to create organizational cultures that are working for you rather than against you, join our Accountability Community at www.partnersinleadership.com, where you can review the accounts of actual companies that have created A Culture of Accountability.

Culture of Accountability and Accountability Community are registered trademarks of Partners In Leadership Inc.