The Dark Side of Company Culture: Stasis and Conformity

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Sep 13, 2023, 12:28 ET

New C-Suite Intelligence podcast features The Miles Group CEO Stephen Miles and Managing Director John Nasr on creating and maintaining a high-performance company culture, not letting success transform it into stasis and conformity

"If you are the CEO, you have to invest in the business of tomorrow. You have to care deeply about the business of tomorrow, and you have to figure out how to build a bridge to the business of tomorrow. And that is wicked hard."
– Stephen Miles

NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Culture is most often shaped and fortified on the margin, when leaders must make hard choices, says Stephen Miles, CEO of The Miles Group (TMG). Depending on what they can tolerate, their decisions will either result in a high-performing company culture or one that leads to high levels of conformity and stasis.

On this week's new C-Suite Intelligence podcast episode, "The Dark Side of Company Culture: Stasis and Conformity," Miles and Managing Director John Nasr discuss the criticality of a company's culture to its longevity and long-term success. They also explore the dark side of corporate culture – stagnation that can lead to an organization's irrelevance and decline.

"What gets in the way of a company's long-term high performance is this notion of short-term performance," says Miles. The company's "success leads to some level of hubris…then that leads you to take shortcuts, and to not challenge the status quo. This breeds a sense of complacency and mediocrity. And ultimately, that success diminishes over time."

It's all about learning it all, not knowing it all.

"In the process of becoming reliable, a company fortifies the culture around protecting the business of today," says Nasr. "That can cause stasis. People become more focused on activities and less focused on outcomes and results."

"If you are the CEO, you have to invest in the business of tomorrow," says Miles. "You have to care deeply about the business of tomorrow, and you have to figure out how to build a bridge to the business of tomorrow. And that is wicked hard."

"Part of being great at the people business is this ratio of developing people from within, being able to graft people from the outside, and being successful at both. We want that outside-in DNA to continue to infuse the organization" and create a culture with a strong backbone.

"The Dark Side of Company Culture: Stasis and Conformity" is out now on Apple, Google, Spotify, TMG's website, or wherever you get your podcasts.

For more information, please contact executive producers Davia Temin or Trang Mar of Temin and Company at 212.588.8788 or [email protected].

About the C-Suite Intelligence podcast
CEOs running the world's top companies don't start out that way – they pull ahead of their peers with behaviors and practices that make them the "best of the best." Stephen Miles and the team at TMG coach some of the world's most successful executives, helping them continuously up their game even as business conditions grow more complex every day. Learn the secrets of the highest performers and use this intelligence to power your career. New episodes are released bi-weekly on Apple, Google, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

About The Miles Group/TMG
TMG develops talent strategies for organizations, teams, and individuals – focusing on high-performance, world-class leadership. Through assessments and development, coaching, leadership transition planning, and organizational design, TMG helps clients cultivate exceptional talent from the C-suite to the next generation of leaders throughout the organization. Clients include many of the Fortune 100 as well as VC portfolio companies, firms in transition, and organizations around the globe and across industries. TMG has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, C-Suite, Entrepreneur, and Chief Executive. The firm is headquartered in New York City and operates globally. For more information, visit https://miles-group.com. Follow TMG on LinkedIn and X, and Stephen Miles on Forbes.