Substantive Satisfaction & Organizational Change

We’ve talked a lot the past few weeks about business culture. We’ve discussed procedural satisfaction, which applies to the way a business is run and how it communicates internally. We’ve talked about relational satisfaction, which has to do with the way that employees interact with one another and work together. Today, we’re going to tie it all together by talking about substantive satisfaction.

Substantive satisfaction is the manifestation of procedural and relational satisfaction coming together. It is the culture. It is a chosen way of being, of doing business. Substance is all about how people agree; as such, it’s an integral part of culture.

In many ways, substantive satisfaction is the application of everything we’ve talked about so far. It takes all of the components of relational satisfaction and procedural satisfaction and creates something of substance from those parts.

A framework for achieving substantive satisfaction

As we’ve discussed before, there is a very basic formula to create substantive satisfaction within a business culture:

People trust (relational) + process trust (procedural) = substance that has been agreed upon.

A business has to build a strong culture if it’s going to not only continue to survive, but thrive. A strong culture helps a business execute its mission and vision, while making minor adjustments to procedures along the way.

That strong business culture is the basic framework that results in substantive satisfaction. It is the organizational support (culture) that is the base for positive organizational change. Without it, a company will stagnate and, eventually, die.

The importance of substantive satisfaction to company culture

There are several ways in which substantive satisfaction directly benefits company culture:

Substantive satisfaction is assuring. It creates an alignment among members and employees of the business with the values of the organization.
Substantive satisfaction strengthens culture. When a company has a strong company culture, people that work for and with the business do things that create positive change because they believe it’s the right thing to do.
Substantive satisfaction means fewer external controls. Because organization members and employees are aligned with the company culture, there is less need for external controls such as disciplinary procedures and bureaucracy.
A company culture that results in substantive satisfaction results in growth and innovation for the company.

All of these together mean that a business can devote its time, resources, and energy to fulfilling the mission of the business, rather than dealing with symptoms of a weak culture.

What happens when company culture is weak

Even good workers can sometimes fall into terrible habits when the company culture discourages substantive change. How, then, do you recognize a weak company culture? There are several specific problems that a weak company culture creates, including:

In a weak culture, there is very little alignment with the values of the organization; this means the business has to devote significant energies to exercising control over employees through bureaucracy and additional procedures.
In a weak culture, you’ll see a lot more problems with meetings. We talked last month about the four meeting mindsets: vacationer, prisoner, critic, and developer. A weak company culture creates more vacationers, prisoners, and critics, and discourages developers.
A weak culture leads to a number of other unhealthy symptoms, such as whistleblowers.
A weak culture discourages creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. It crushes innovation and it rewards complacency.

If you’re seeing these kinds of mindsets and behaviors in your company, it’s a good indication that your company culture is not as healthy as it needs to be. It means it’s a good time to look at processes (procedural satisfaction) and people (relational satisfaction).

What a positive and healthy business culture looks like

A healthy business culture is the sum of trust and development of procedural and relational satisfaction. It is the natural result of procedural and relational satisfactions.

A healthy business culture accepts and appreciates the diversity involved in the business personnel, both in terms of their ways of thinking and the varied backgrounds and skillsets they bring to the table. It trusts each employee’s contribution to the company, and believes that those contributions will result in positive substantive change.

In this way, each employee is encouraged to realize their full potential within the company. Employees begin to see themselves as partners with management, rather than simply employees to be managed. Management begins to see employees as irreplaceable, and places their trust fully in the abilities of each employee.

Positive culture and substantive satisfaction

When there is substantive satisfaction in a business, you’ll begin to see some remarkable things take place:

Employees display pride and enthusiasm for the organization, for their own contribution to the organization, and for the overall results that the organization achieves.
The company will become more competitive within its industry.
The company will become more innovative, allowing it to pull ahead of the competition in many ways.
Because people in the business are more enthusiastic and more effective at their jobs, you’ll have lower than average staff turnover. This, in turn, benefits the company by reducing the resources it has to devote to training and to bringing new employees into the company culture.

What is your company culture like?

Knowing everything we’ve talked about this month, it’s time for you to choose to take a long, hard, and honest look at your business’ culture. You need to ask some important questions:

What mindset do people have when attending meetings? The three negative mindsets are a sure sign that there’s a problem with the company culture.
What procedures and processes are standing in the way of substantive change? It may be time to let go of some idols in regard to process.
What roadblocks are keeping your organization from relational satisfaction? Are you trusting your people the way you should? Do they trust one another? Is there a constant shifting of blame, or is there a constant air of encouragement?

Good company culture and substantive satisfaction doesn’t happen by accident. You must choose to intentionally cultivate procedural and relational satisfaction if you want to have substantive satisfaction and a healthy company culture.

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