Failure Platitudes

I spoke at the annual lunch of the Chester Ellesmere Port and North Wales Chamber of Commerce today - and, as ever with chambers, I was very pleased to do so.

An HR consultant came up to me afterwards and told me how, in his view, whilst so many corporate culture problems stem from leadership itself, the definition - and the responsibility tends to get shunted off into some other area.

In fact, we see this kind of problem so often in our own work that we have a term for it - Failure Platitudes. Time and again during our ongoing corporate culture research we come across instances where blame is defined in one of the following areas: leadership, management, stratgegy, processes, communications and people.

In reality, problems are actually rooted in other areas entirely, or, quite possibly, in multiple areas.

So, next time you hear:

"Oh, it's all about our leadership"

Or

"Oh, it's all about our management"

Or

"Oh, it's all about our strategy"

Or

"Oh, it's all about our processes"

Or

"Oh, it's all about our communications"

Or

"Oh, it's all about our people"

- just stop and have a careful think. Oh, indeed.......the responsibility might lie a lot closer to home than your use of Failure Platitude* suggests.

*Failure Platitude is a proprietory term of The Cultureship Practice, which researches coporate culture and seeks to develop productive and satisfying cultures driven by strong business ethics.