Communicating about the disconnect

This is not a full post... but I don't want to forget about this and so thought I would record it here. I met with my manager today (regular weekly progress meeting). We were discussing monthly reports, some new management tools the company has provided to him (and other managers) and the over all push to change the company culture in to a more collaborative, team-player, "we all mater" type culture. So - I took a chance and talked to him about some of the specific example I've seen of a disconnect between this desired culture and the actions that the company is taking. Rather than simply complain about "cost containment," "lack of resources," etc - I explained how confusing it is to read an announcement about the latest effort to celebrate our new culture but then 5 min. later receive an email explaining that we can no longer purchase office supplies w/o director approval. Turns out that very example came up at the last manager meeting and that it led to a discussion about the dispensing communication situation.

So - I went out on a further limb. Recently the company has been pushing (err... promoting) the idea of singling out individuals in different groups who are doing a particularly great job of exemplifying the new culture. Each department is being asked to pick three people from other departments that truly stand out as working to represent this new culture. While this is a nice idea and it is certainly gratifying to get individual recognition - I pointed out that if the culture is really about working together than what we should be promoting is examples of groups that have exemplified excellent collaboration. I suggest that in addition to rewarding individual contributions, we might want to find a way to celebrate examples of collaborative contributions. I even offered a few examples of recent projects that I'm aware of (not necessarily ones I've been personally involved in either) where it was the collaborative effort that made it happen and where that collaborative effort not only included the various individuals who specifically worked on the project but also the other individuals who supported them in some way (by taking up slack elsewhere, by providing consultations, etc.). He (my manager) thought this was an excellent idea and plans to bring it up at the next managers meeting. It will be most interesting to see if anything comes of this. I certainly hope it does.