The senior partner of a law firm asks colleagues a simple question to assess the health of the organisation’s culture: “Why do you stay?”
There is a twist, he told me. They should not answer when they are in the flow of an exciting case, basking in the prestige and pay of their position, or looking forward to a sunny weekend surrounded by their admiring family. Instead, they should recall their worst day — when a senior colleague had bawled them out, say, the workload seemed unmanageable, and they arrived home in a rainstorm, too late to kiss the children good night. Why did they stay on that day?
For all the emphasis on scientific gauges of culture, powered by big data or artificial intelligence, this seems a good way of probing for organisational strengths and weaknesses. Last week, in a farewell note to staff at Goldman Sachs, outgoing chief executive Lloyd Blankfein half-answered the question: “When times are tougher, you can’t leave,” he wrote. “And, when times are better, you don’t want to leave.”