Culture of Mediocrity

I spent the week reflecting on this piece, “Does your organization have a culture of mediocrity?”, after a former colleague bluntly told me that our former company had been a mediocre one. 

It’s a great read if you’re interested in things like performance, growth, and people management. 

There’s a lot of food for thought and ideas about how to both spot and rectify mediocrity within organizations. 

But at the end of the piece, the author asks a simple question: Does mediocrity matter? 

There are a ton of boring businesses that are able to grow a couple percentage points a year, and most top-level stakeholders are ok with that. (Until, all of a sudden, they aren’t growing a couple percentage points annually anymore.)

The thing about culture is that, as an employee, you’re largely stuck with whatever the status quo is; attempting to change an organization’s culture without a mandate and buy-in from the highest levels of management is a loser’s game. 

Choosing a company based on its culture is all the more critical once you understand that it’s a fixed thing.