IS YOUR ORGANIZATION SUFFERING FROM A HIGH LEVEL OF CULTURAL ENTROPY?
What Is Cultural Entropy®?
Cultural Entropy is the amount of energy in an organizational culture consumed by your employees doing unproductive work. In other words, doing work that does not add value to your organization.
It is also a measure of the amount of conflict, friction and frustration that employees encounter in their day-to-day activities that gets in the way of your people and your organization operating at peak performance. Cultural entropy manifests as potentially limiting values such as bureaucracy, blame, power, greed, and hierarchy.
Cultural entropy is a function of the personal entropy of the current leaders of an organization and the institutional legacy of past leaders that is embedded in the organization’s structures, systems, policies and procedures.
Our Cultural Transformation Programs and Building Trust Workshop teach your leaders and employees how to reduce cultural entropy, build trust and increase employee engagement.
82% OF PEOPLE SAY THEY DON'T TRUST THEIR BOSS TO TELL THE TRUTH
SUCCESSFUL AND HEALTHY ORGANIZATIONS ARE BUILT ON A FOUNDATION OF TRUST
When employees DO NOT TRUST their leaders, companies suffer a decline in communication, innovation and overall performance.
45% OF EMPLOYEES say lack of trust in leadership has the biggest impact on their performance.*
successful and healthy organizations are built on a foundation of trust
When trust is broken, the work environment becomes toxic. People become stressed and work in silos, there’s low collaboration and morale and productivity drops.
How Cultural Entropy Impacts the Performance of Your Organization
The amount of energy you get out of an organization (a.k.a. “value-added work” or work that adds value to your organization) is equal to the amount of energy you put into your organization, minus the amount of energy needed to keep your organization functioning.
When the level of dysfunction or disorder in an organization is high, the amount of energy employees must exert to get their work done increases. The additional energy required to complete their work tasks is what we call “cultural entropy” because it is caused by factors that are endemic to the culture of the organization. Factors that cause cultural entropy include excessive control, caution, confusion, bureaucracy, hierarchy, internal competition, blame, and a silo mentality. Energy employees must exert to overcome cultural entropy becomes energy that is unavailable for completing value‐added work.
In contrast, high trust organizations experience 32X GREATER RISK-TAKING, 11X MORE INNOVATION, AND 6X HIGHER PERFORMANCE.**
SUCCESSFUL AND HEALTHY ORGANIZATIONS ARE BUILT ON A FOUNDATION OF TRUST
Everyone deserves to work in a safe environment where they can flourish. That’s why our award-winning Building Trust program with its four-step model is easy to learn, easy to remember, easy to use on the job, and helps you build a foundation of trust in your organization.
When cultural entropy is high, the energy available for value‐added work falls, and the performance of your organization is low. When cultural entropy is low, the amount of available energy for completing value-added work increases, and the level of performance is high.
There is an additional factor that must be considered regarding how cultural entropy impacts the performance of your organization. That factor is the amount of discretionary energy released by employees when they are highly motivated by their work. When employees feel aligned with the values of your organization and they are inspired by the mission or vision of the organization you will see a high level of employee engagement.
When people are not highly motivated by their work they channel any discretionary energy they may have into their private lives, and they expend only the minimum amount energy at their place of work that they believe they must display to avoid getting fired.
So how does that play out on a day-to-day basis? Employees take longer breaks, they surf the internet and do whatever they can to avoid feeling bored or to feel like time pass quickly.
On the other hand, when people are highly motivated, they gladly spend extra time at work and think about their contribution to the organization even when they are not in the workplace. Research consistency shows that the output from a motivated person can be twice as much as the output from someone who is not motivated and engaged.
The amount of cultural entropy in your organization has a direct impact of the amount of motivation, engagement and discretionary energy your employees bring to work day-to-day.
Are You Ready to Reduce the Amount of Cultural Entropy Within Your Organization?
CULTURAL ENTROPY BEGINS WITH PERSONAL ENTROPY
WHAT IS PERSONAL ENTROPY?
Personal entropy is the amount of fear-driven energy that a person expresses in his or her day-to-day interactions with other people.
Fear-driven energy arises from the conscious and subconscious fear-based beliefs of a person’s ego about meeting its deficiency needs. These fears arise three areas where people feel either they are not receiving enough of something they need from external sources or they have an internal feeling that they are not enough:
- I do not have enough. Limiting beliefs at the survival level of conscious development are about not having enough of what you need to feel safe and secure.
- I am not loved enough. Limiting beliefs at the relationship level of conscious development are about not feeling loved enough to be accepted and protected.
- I am not enough. Limiting beliefs at the self-esteem level of conscious development are about not being enough to engender the respect or acknowledgment of the authority figures in your life or your peers.
How Do You Measure Entropy?
We measure personal entropy through a 360-degree feedback instrument we call a Leadership Values Assessment (LVA). Personal entropy is the proportion of votes for potentially limiting values that assessors choose to describe the operating style of a manager or leader.
We measure cultural entropy in an organization by performing a Cultural Values Assessment (CVA). Cultural entropy is the proportion of votes for limiting values that participants in an assessment choose to describe the current culture of the organization. The majority of cultural entropy is directly related to the personal entropy of the managers and leaders of the organization.
When you have trusting relationships between your team members and their leaders, you have the foundation for building a successful organization with higher levels of collaboration, increased creativity and risk-taking, more effective execution of business strategy, and increased commitment and loyalty to your company.
Increase Performance
when you build a foundation of trust
Employees have higher levels of commitment and give more discretionary effort.
Retain Your Talent
when you build a foundation of trust
Employees are more likely to stay and endorse the company as a great place to work.
Increase Innovation
when you build a foundation of trust
Employees feel safe to communicate more openly, share their best ideas, and take initiative.
Create Colaberation
when you build a foundation of trust
Colleagues and teams help each other and work together to get things done.
DO YOU WANT TO REDUCE CULTURAL ENTROPY IN YOUR ORGANIZATION?
THE CULTURAL ENTROPY® SCORE
The Cultural Entropy score reveals the amount of energy consumed by doing unproductive or unnecessary work.
The Cultural Entropy score reveals the degree of dysfunction (friction and frustration) in an organization or any group of human structure like a community, school or nation that is generated by the self-serving, fear-based actions of the leaders. As the Cultural Entropy score goes up, the level of trust and internal cohesion goes down.
To gain trust, the leaders have to operate with authenticity and live with integrity. They have to demonstrate that they care about their people and the common good.
The Cultural Entropy score in an organization is influenced by the fear-based actions and behaviors of the leaders, managers, and supervisors.
We all know how important trust is in every important relationship. Our Building Trust and Cultural Transformation programs can greatly reduce the amount of cultural entropy in your organization by helping your leaders and their team members learn how to build trust in the workplace and repair it when it’s been broken.
A PROVEN FORMULA TO REDUCE ENTROPY AND BUILD TRUST IN YOUR ORGANIZATION
The level of cultural entropy significantly influences the performance of an organization by impacting the level of employee engagement and the amount of discretionary energy that employees are willing to make available to the organization. The level of cultural entropy in an organization is a function of the personal entropy of the leaders. Therefore, to improve the performance of an organisation the leaders must work on reducing their level of personal entropy by improving their level of personal mastery.
Our Leadership Development and Executive Coaching programs are an excellent way for leaders to improve their personal mastery. A great way to begin your journey to personal mastery is by experiencing first hand the power of coaching with a complimentary Ultimate Success Coach Personal Mastery Breakthrough Coaching Session by clicking here.
Likewise, our Cultural Transformation programs provide excellent ways to reduce cultural entropy and improve cultural performance. We offer a number of fantastic ways to begin to begin your cultural transformation journey. If you know your organization is suffering from a poorly performing culture with a high level of culture entropy, but you don’t know exactly what is causing the problems or how to change your organization’s culture, a great place to begin your journey is with a Cultural Transformation Opportunities Exploration Session.
Although, the Cultural Transformation Opportunities Exploration Session is valued at $1,500.00, when you sign up for your Cultural Transformation Opportunities Exploration Session, we will provide it to you as a complimentary gift to reward you for taking fast action to transform your organization’s culture. Obviously, the number of complimentary Cultural Transformation Opportunities Exploration Sessions we can offer is limited. So don’t delay, sign up today by clicking here.
If you suspect a lack of trust may be causing problems with your organization, then a great way to start restoring trust is by implementing our Building Trust program in your organization as a half-day workshop. The Building Trust half-day workshop includes instruction, a trust survey, videos, practice, and valuable tools to use on the job. This is a stand-alone module, but can also be used as a lead-in or follow-up module to our other programs.
In just four hours, your participants will:
• Learn the Building Trust framework
• Develop an action plan to engage in more trust-building behaviors
• Learn a three-step process for rebuilding trust
• Plan and practice two trust-building conversations
After the workshop, participants will understand the impact of their behavior on building or eroding trust with others. Your organization will gain a common language to talk about trust and people will be more comfortable asking for help, leading to quicker problem-solving.
