“Culture Vultures” and Other Distractions
Timely advice from an executive coach

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

Albert Einstein

If you work with vaccines, then you understand the idea that offense is defense – that you anticipate that a virus is coming and get ahead of it. And that’s exactly the mindset we found when we sought the advice of an executive coach asking how our programs and careers might thrive in unsettled and unsettling times.

OUR COACH: Bill Goodwin has led several companies, including a telehealth company that was bought by Walmart, and who has developed a reputation for creating high-performance cultures. He’s now a coach specializing in team and leadership development.

We started by asking Bill how to think about the current state of uncertainty. He replied…

“How do you maintain your own grounding? You take a breath and then you recognize it isn’t about you. You’re not in control. If you accept that, then you decide how to think about what you’re facing. I like to believe that things tend to work out for the best for most people, no matter the outcome. That’s not always true, but more often, it is.”

WHY ARE YOU EXCITED?

So, you admit you’re not in control, but you also start with a basic optimism. And what do you do with that? Maybe you hold on and assume that everything is all going to work out? Or maybe you shore up your organizational defenses?

“Many years ago I had someone tell me that you had to decide if you’re a peacetime CEO or a wartime CEO. And if you’re a wartime CEO, then you go on the attack. When I was an employee, I didn’t want to wait for my boss to tell me where we were going—I wanted to get ahead of the boss, to be the one to implementing ideas and coming up with plans. Once you start taking action, you’re going to feel better. So, go on the offensive and promote your programs: explain why they’re good, and why you’re excited about what you’re doing, and why the budget is already tight but how we’re going to make the best of it. You get in front of it before your boss gets in front of you.”

HARD BUT LESS DIFFICULT – GETTING TO WHAT REALLY MATTERS

In doing so, you might be able to “inoculate” yourself or your department from the worst outcomes. That said, I know from reading articles you’ve written that one of your goals for managers is to decrease drama. Can we decrease drama while going on the attack?

“One of those articles is about ‘difficult’ versus ‘hard.’ Let’s start with understanding the distinction. Hard refers to effort and discipline, including being willing to step out of your comfort zone, and to put in the hard work.  Difficult, on the other hand, is when we create unnecessary obstacles — we increase the difficulty of something by pursuing too many initiatives, not communicating well, having too many meetings, not staying clear on the priorities. We create drama and create friction. It’s just noise. Being successful is hard work, but when you make work more difficult than it need be, then that decreases your energy and you work more hours. We have to stay focused and clear on what we need to do.

“When I work with leadership teams, we cut through all the unnecessary structure, meetings and initiatives. You remove all that because when it’s striped away, effort can be concentrated on what really matters. So that’s one way to decrease the drama by making it less difficult. It will always be hard, but less difficult.”

THE “CULTURE VULTURES”

Speaking of focusing on what really matters, you’ve also written about “intentional culture,” and the need to protect it from the “culture vultures.” Ya gotta love that name because we all instantly recognize that there people who pull down the team, and that has got to be part of what makes achievement more difficult, right?

“Every leadership team I’ve worked with, every leadership team that I have led, has been dysfunctional. Every single one. The question for the leadership team is the degree you can reduce it.  The hardest case is the good employee who’s got a bad culture effect.  Every company has them, and every CEO, myself included, wants to put their heads in the sand; we keep that person because they’re so highly productive or the rain maker or whatever. We hope it will get better but we know it ruins our culture long-term.

And that’s the type of employee you’ve labeled the “culture vulture.” With your permission, I’ll include your four types of employees and your description of each from your article that available on LinkedIn.

“I wrote that article several years ago and it’s gotten the most traction and shares than anything I’ve written. And that’s because there’s a culture vulture in every organization. So, yes, let’s include it.”

• Stellar Sally – hang on to her for dear life. Employees like Sally are in top segment of your employee bell curve – top performers that fit your culture like a glove. Keep them, celebrate them and encourage their efforts.
• Nice Nick – find a position or create a position where he can do well and add value to the organization. If you can’t find a position where he can do well, you are faced with a tough dilemma. As a for profit company you can’t really keep him just because he fits your culture. If you keep low performers, others will realize they don’t have to work as hard. The thinking is “if Nick is still here and he is not good at his job, then I am fine doing the bare minimum”. You will have to let him go if you can’t find a spot. Tough decision, but long-term the right decision for your organization, and ultimately Nick (he will be happier when he is in a job that matches his talents).
• Terrible Terry – move him out. Today.
• Culture Vulture Chris – you have to move her out ASAP. The worst thing you can do is keep top performers who violate your values. Even just one person can kill your culture, and all other employees see this. Your organization is underperforming with Chris there, and in fact you will lose good employees if you keep Chris around. Get involved with your clients and your employees – you will survive the storm. In fact, you will be pleasantly surprised how favorably the organization will respond, and they will jump through hoops to help you fill the gap left by letting Chris go. Your company will be better than ever before.

“Let me add to that last comment. Once you make the move to remove a culture vulture, the rest of the organization responds quite favorably because they didn’t like being around that person either. Productivity for the whole organization goes up. So while you might have to take a short-term hit, it’s good for the benefit of the entire organization long-term. “

THE PULSE OF THE TEAM: “THE ORGANZATION IS ALIVE”

 Another of the principles that you’ve written about is the importance of every interaction with the team, even seemingly insignificant ones, starting with how you say “Good morning.” Would you argue that every interaction affects the energy flow in the team?

“I’m a huge believer in that you can sense what a culture is by the type of energy, and degree of energy, you feel in that organization. You can feel it on zoom calls. You can feel it as you walk through the office. You don’t need to look at values and you don’t need to look at core purpose – you feel it. Don’t get me wrong – values and purpose are important, but if an organization has an energy you can feel, that’s going to help them thrive. If it’s not there, it’s not going to happen. You can sense when people are engaged, sharing ideas, offering solutions, coming up with new things to think about. They are liking their jobs and they having fun. The energy is everything in an organization: you either got the energy to move forward, or you have no energy which is very flat, or you have a negative energy which is very toxic.

“I always believe the organization is alive and is an entity just as much as you or I are. It has its own rhythm. It has its own pulse. It has its own energy. And that energy is comprised of the energy of the people in the organization.“

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STATS OF THE MONTH

A Good Start:  Early Education Matters!

(And so do better graphs and charts!)

By Bill Davenhall, Geomedicine Analyst

What if the data on private and public-school education is the “canary in the educational coal mine” in America? I decided to look at some recent reports that might suggest a different way to look at and perhaps think about what a child’s early educational data is “saying.” I was intrigued by a simple chart (Figure 3) containing excellent references and attributions, written and published by the Department of Education for the US Congress. The “ Report on the Condition of Education 2024” (fifty-three page) publication of the Institute of Educational Sciences of the National Center of Educational Statistics. You will find a PDF of the report  here.

What caught my attention was how something as complex as early childhood educational impact on downstream life could be – could be easily communicated with better charts and graphs instead of verbose pages of explanation? Trying to understand the  most important  determinates of getting children off to a great start (I would even take “good” start) was my goal. The chart below allowed me to quickly grasp two of the most critical character determinates of what likely could have the greatest influence on a child’s “break out of the gate” (as they say in horse racing) prepared to lap the track as best as they can.

Take a moment to study this chart – which tells its convincing story. The challenges for those readers engaged in the immunization ecosystem can easily see the hurdles that they will face in any particular  geography of the United States.  Important decisions are being made about all children’s  future as measured by both their success of educational attainment – early and frequent throughout their lifetime. 

Education and particularly a child’s early education is not well served by disruptions – like natural disasters, disease outbreaks, lockdowns and assaults in or around their space.  The report in its other 52 pages brings to a reader’s attention all the numbers you might need to make some judgments about what’s important or better understand the complexity of the education “systems” that we employ to serve our children and young adults. Yes, they are only seeing facts, but you are also looking at “canaries.”  (While you don’t have to totally agree with these numbers, they were computed using sophisticated surveying methods. You may have a better sense of what is really happening in childhood education across the united States, and if you have more accurate  data, then please publish it.)

There were over 16,000+ school districts managing over 99,200+ individual schools and  educating about 54.1 million students in the 2024-25 school year. These students are already entered in the educational race with another 1.5 million pre-kindergartners lining up for their first “heat” in their public or private education. This is no small “ecosystem” responsible for forging America’s future.  Decisions being made today in any one school or district in any state will have an tremendous impact on a child’s education. The risk of not getting a great start matters. Recognizing that there are certain family and school characteristics that will impact their successful running of their lifelong educational race is a serious and sobering job. Better charts and graphs can help the public grasp the story better.  That’s my advice.

As always, I appreciate your 2^nd opinions.