Is your organisation worthy of your commitment? If you are a leader within an organisation, what are you doing to create an organisation that is worthy of the commitment of the people who work there?

I first heard these two questions in 2001. They were posed by a wonderful woman named Michelle Hunt, who has spent the better part of the last fifteen years helping organisations to answer these two questions.

What organisations, from your experience, have been worthy of your commitment? This is a free chance for you to advertise and possibly attract talent to those organisations.

From my perspective, creating an organisation that is worthy of the commitment of the people who work there is a strategic decision. Think about the advantages of having commited versus uncommited staff. It is hardly a contest, is it!

It is also possible that you may have worked in a department of an organisation that had somehow managed to be worthy of your commitment, even though the rest of the organisation may have been toxic or at least not worthy of your commitment.

Please note that these questions do not suggest that you shouldn’t be doing your best for your organisation, even if it is not worthy of your commitment. The questions are really about the deliberate and conscious culture that your organisation is trying to create that genuinely values the contributions of the people who work in the organisation. With regard to culture, all of us contribute to an organisation’s culture, at least to some degree. In that context, all of us are to a smaller or greater extent, contributors to the worthiness or otherwise of the organisations within which we work. For example, if unacceptable behaviour such as bullying is tolerated (which means it has become acceptable), but we have never done anything about it (I acknowledge how difficult taking action in such circumstances can be) then we have in fact contributed to the continuation of that culture.

Please share your thoughts and experiences on this topic.