To complain or not to complain, that is the question…

As a manager, one of the biggest challenges is creating and maintaining the right culture in your department. In my case as the CEO I am concerned about the culture/atmosphere throughout the entire company. It might sound simple, but it’s quite a complicated thing, culture and atmosphere. What really goes into a company culture or atmosphere? What makes it good or great?

I personally believe that mostly what is perceived to be a good atmosphere is working in an environment that is open and friendly, where employees have plenty of support from their managers to do their jobs and where stress created at the workplace is kept to a minimum. I am referring here to stress created by managers or other employees (members of the same team) and this should clearly be minimized. Obviously we can’t completely control the stress that is created due to external factors such as the irrational behavior of clients or vendors. That unfortunately comes with the job sometimes.

Good culture in a company means that employees and managers are working together toward a common goal. The goals are shared and understood and everyone is willing to help everyone else in order to achieve these goals. Having good company culture or a good atmosphere leads to excellent teamwork, which as I have said before is critical to a company’s success.

In order to create such an environment, managers need to be open, listen to the problems of the employees who report to them. Managers also need to do an excellent job communicating expectations and goals so that everybody is moving in the same direction. Employees need to have the opportunity to provide their input, to be able to shape and define goals. At the same time employees need to understand that not every change they want to make can or will be implemented. As I said it’s a fine line and its tricky. That’s why there are plenty of companies out there that fail at this.

One of the most destructive forces that can occur when trying to create and maintain the right company culture is when an employee or a group of employees develop a complaining and/or negative attitude. Negativity and complaining can simply kill any positive or creative plans that a manager is trying to implement. Negativity and complaining can have many sources, some people might simply have a negative attitude to life and are just natural “complainers”. Others are frustrated with the direction things are moving, or feel like their voices are not being heard. There are others who believe that poor management decisions are being taken. Whatever the source of the negativity/complaining may be, this in my opinion, is a culture/atmosphere killer. This is the number one warning sign that managers need to look out for because once it starts it can get out of control and all the hard work on creating a positive solution-oriented culture can be flushed down the toilet. It’s important to try to spot this frustration or these tendencies right when they start and try to figure out whether there is something that can be done to solve any problems that exist.

Of course there are cases where this can get completely out of control and then drastic measures need to be taken, but usually it’s enough to understand what the problems are, what the goals are, and get everyone on the same page working toward these goals.

On the other hand, it’s important that employees always feel like they can approach their manager and provide critical feedback on how to improve things and not worry about being called “a complainer”. At Argos its extremely important for us to get feedback about what we can improve. I urge all employees to give constructive feedback to their managers whenever they can.

What we want to avoid is a situation where someone complains but does not offer any positive solutions to the problem. Such people just complain to complain and that does not help anybody accomplish anything. It just makes it more difficult to create or maintain the type of culture we would like to have at Argos.