I was standing in my favorite bagel store recently, waiting for my order, when I struck up a conversation with a stranger also waiting for hers. She started bemoaning how much the area was going downhill with all the “drug issues.” As a lover of my hometown, I asked her to tell me more.
She explained that during her morning walks, she regularly comes across drug paraphernalia on the paseos. “Can you believe it?” she asked. “We have to step around the needles and ensure our little pooch doesn’t stand on them.”
My fellow Santa Claritian went on to say how she was also disgusted by the increasing amount of graffiti she notices on the bridges, right here in “Awesometown.”
It was at this point that I politely interrupted her to ask if she’d spoken up about what she saw — had she ever called the police or the graffiti hotline? I shared an example of when we suspected illegal drug use behind our house; we called the sheriff, and within 15 minutes, they were there and dealt with the issue. I gave another example of being at Hart Park and noticing graffiti on the curbstone. We called the city’s hotline and, in a flash, the crew arrived and steam-blasted that graffiti out of existence.
Before she could respond, her order arrived and she hurried out of the store, calling back over her shoulder: “We don’t care about reporting what we see — we’re moving to Nashville when my husband retires.”
And that’s how it went down at Dink’s.
It got me thinking about how many neighborhoods have gone to ruin because people simply didn’t speak up. The relevant authorities only have so much personnel and resources, so we, as neighbors, can be the additional hands and feet to report what we see — ideally also rolling up our sleeves as volunteers when we can.
Relating this principle to the workplace, it made me think about how many organizations have ruinous cultures simply because no one speaks up about issues that should have been dealt with by the relevant authorities — namely, the organization’s leadership.
Consider the number of organizations that have fallen from grace and, as a result, went out of existence because people didn’t speak up about what they saw. Think of Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, Global Crossing and Tyco International, to name just a few.
Internal investigations often validated this fact: Many saw something, but few said something.
From our observations at Newleaf Training and Development, nothing spreads quicker across an organization than negativity, gossiping, and backbiting if not addressed by leadership — this is the “graffiti” of the workplace, as these behaviors are really tags of much deeper issues.
Likewise, if direct or indirect fraud is allowed to continue — for example, due to pressure to achieve results at all costs — morale will drop. Why? Because as human beings, we innately know right from wrong.
When few people are willing to speak up, heads go down instead.
We recently consulted with an organization that had a very disengaged workforce. It was sad to see that only 24% of the employee population was willing to speak up during a survey process we offered — even though we provided various platforms for feedback and assured employees of absolute confidentiality.
How disheartening it must be for someone to spend so many of their waking hours working at a place where the culture is sub-optimal but they won’t speak up to influence positive change — usually for fear of retribution or resignation that nothing will change.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Whether we’re talking about our place of work or the place we call home, let’s all commit to speaking up and, ideally, rolling up our sleeves to help improve matters where we can. It is people who create neighborhoods and, likewise, people who create workplace cultures. Good can triumph over bad if enough people are willing to positively impact change.
If it doesn’t work out, I assume we could all move to Nashville, as it sounds like it really is awesome there.
Paul Butler is a Santa Clarita resident and a client partner with Newleaf Training and Development of Valencia (newleaftd.com). For questions or comments, email Butler at [email protected].
