Oohh this is a topic near and dear to me.
There is a real gap between Enbridge’s aspirational culture and the culture people can actually experience.
We say we want to be: empowered, high-performing, collaborative, innovative, willing to challenge the status quo, take measured risks and focus on outcomes.
But too often we operate as: hierarchical, conservative, risk-averse and process-driven, where consensus, relationships and protecting the organization can matter more than speed, accountability and outcomes.
The people side of this is particularly illuminating. Our large, bureaucratic organization can regress into an “old boys’ club” mentality, where who you know, who you trust and who you like can carry more weight than the quality of the idea.
That creates a serious problem: minority views and constructive dissent become harder to surface. The organization is less capable of challenging its own assumptions and finding the best answer.
It also makes me question how we use our values.
Do our values actually guide difficult decisions, or do we make the decision first and then use the values to justify it afterward?
If our values are genuine, they should be visible in how difficult decisions are made, not simply cited to explain decisions that have already been made.
Values should guide the decision, not decorate the rationale.