2 Challenges for a Changing World: Is Your Organizational Culture Keeping Up?

Bruce is the founder of ProjectManagementHacks.com, a resource for growing IT project managers.

  Organizational Culture  

Financial results are the standard measure of a company's health. Financial measures are essential. Yet managing by those measures alone is like driving by staring at your rear-view mirror. We need more ways to determine if an organization is successful.

Why Focusing on Organizational Culture Matters
As a project manager, you have multiple decisions every day on which companies to interact with. You can decide to change your clients or employer if an organization is misbehaving. You can also influence the procurement process if a third party has reputational problems from a supplier and vendor standpoint.

Since it is difficult to assess organization culture in abstract terms, for this article I will be looking at culture through the lens of two key challenges: employee well-being and climate change.

Organizational Challenge 1: Mental Health & Employee Well-Being
Taking mental health concerns and difficulties seriously is relatively rare. The fact that "taking a mental health day" is still seen as a joke in some circles is a symptom of the problem. One fundamental problem in organizational culture is the broken way we view working hours in many companies.

Pressuring employees to work long hours is a subtle way that employee well-being can be eroded over time. Overall average working hours in the United States are moderate (approximately 35 hours …

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