Off The Cuff... Or Else!!

Really and honest, I don't make this stuff up.  In yesteday's paper, Marc Hansen reported that a local Sears store told local off-duty policemen to scram.  Why?  Evidently because they were scaring away the shoplifters.  In his own words, Marc summarizes the events:

Please leave. You're scaring away the criminals.

That's what a manager at the Merle Hay Mall Sears store told the uniformed Des Moines cop this week.

Not in those words exactly, but that's the way it came out. And it wasn't the first time.

About three weeks earlier, another Des Moines police officer was ordered to leave the same store.

The police are upset about it. The corporate office is embarrassed and apologetic.

With good reason. It's like telling the fire department to leave because you're expecting an explosion.

I really don't need to rehash the article or the idiocy of the situation.  Mr. Hansen did that brilliantly enough in his trademark sarcastic way.  My purpose for bringing this article to light was to see if you noticed at which mall this occurred.  That's right - Merle Hay Mall.  If you recall my post from a couple of months ago, you'll see that management at this mall seems to have a long-standing reputation of some less-than-brilliant actions.  Some might dismiss this current event and my earlier post as mere coincidence, but let's not be too hasty here.

Organizational culture is very pervasive.  People who dismiss the culture of a company, corporation, organization - or even a mall? - as inconsequential to the bottom line performance are missing something very important.  There is definitely a thread of thuggery, a pattern of punity, and a brand of bullying that appears to be consistent within these two stories.  One cannot isolate bad behavior in one part of an organization and think that it will not affect the other parts.  Corporate culture is systemic.

One of the reasons that I get on my soap box about the effects of culture in an organization is that I've seen this domino effect played out over and over again in the past two decades of my career.  Unfortunately, it's a spiral that tends to drain an organization of its best resources (people and financial).

I've been holding discussions recently with a potential client about some team building seminars.  I was relieved when she put culture at the top of her list for creating a high performing team.  Some companies still pay attention to these things.  Others, like Merle Hay Mall, just don't seem to get it.

Comments

[ann michael]

Tim,

I couldn't agree with you more. Many clients downplay the importance of culture. Every action taken within a company is taken within the context of its culture. To try to change or educate without understanding how culture supports or works against the action you want to take is like trying to fly and ignoring the wind patterns!

a

[Janet Green]

Tim, I saw this too. There's simply no way that having uniformed officers in a retail store can be a bad thing, so I decided to take my ex-cop husband's advice and "follow the money." I had to conclude that the store employees must get a commission on merchandise they recover from shoplifters, and therefore were perhaps losing money by having the cops deter thieves. Excellent point about company culture - I think the inability to perpetuate the entrepreneur mentality among far-flung employees is one of the downsides of absentee ownership, from which by definition all large chains suffer. ~ Janet

[Timothy Johnson]

Ann - so true and I love your flying metaphor. I would hope than people would not travel to a foreign country without checking out the local customs first. Corporate culture can be every bit as strong as ethnic culture is.

Janet - thanks for joining the conversation. Your assessment of "following the money" was pretty shrewd. Motivation and rewards and value tie in closely to culture. I remember the old "Best Buy" commission days, and the store clerks' behavior was so bad (because of how they were compensated) that I didn't return for years.