Page 37 - Make Work Great

It Starts with You

succeed. It addresses questions about how to use your precious few
crystal-building minutes each day or week and issues such as how to
expand your crystal, who to include, and what to do as it grows.
At its core, crystal building is simple. It requires only the disciplined
practice of overtness about tasks and clarity within relationships,
two competencies we will discuss in detail in the next two chapters.
Through the demonstration of these patterns, you also encourage as
many qualifi ed people to attach to your crystal as you can, and you
allow those people to become as successful as possible.
If you’re successful (and consistency equals success), you’ll infl u-
ence a new set of patterns and relationships that will make you and
the others in your mini-environment more productive and more sat-
isfi ed with your work. Along the way, it’s a good bet you’ll reduce
stress, enjoy your workplace more, and get more done too. Improving
the network around you is good for everyone in it.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job
Does “changing the immediate environment” equal “changing cor-
porate culture”? Yes and no.
Changing corporate culture is a favorite topic among both business
authors and academics. To look at an organization or a company as
a system, make claims as to what changes the system needs, and then
implement those changes systemwide is a compelling holy grail quest.
Unfortunately, it is always an uphill battle, one with a poorly defi ned
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battle plan. Perhaps even more unfortunately, for most managers and
leaders, it is a different uphill battle than the one they face in deliver-
ing their required results day in and day out. Even if success is possible
(and no such guarantee exists), the system-overhaul type of culture
change can’t get the time and attention it requires to succeed.
Creating a cultural crystal—changing your immediate environ-
ment—is not that kind of culture change. It does not involve a top-
down initiative, an assessment of your company’s current culture, or
a battle plan for you to go out and change your workplace. No matter
who you are—or who you think you are—in your organization, you

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