Tone at the Top includes many spheres of influence throughout an organization. The trickle-down effect of the tone communicated (for good or ill) can emanate from many positions.

While an organization’s board and senior management are most prominently visible, employees often look to their immediate leadership for direction. At WSU, this can include deans, chairs, directors, business and office managers, other supervisors or some combination thereof.

In this video, compliance expert Kristy Grant-Hart explains the importance of not allowing small policy infractions to become routine or “normalized” to an organization’s detriment. Here again, it's typically an employee's immediate leadership team that provides the proper modeling.

The more people see that small actions that violate policies are OK, the more likely they are to make bigger and worse actions.

Kristy Grant-Hart

 

The trickle-down effect does not imply the actions of a few bad actors corrupt the entire organization as there are usually other employees who know what's going on that have the best interests of the organization in mind. A three-level view of Tone at the Top illustrates this point:

• Tone at the Top
• Mood in the Middle
• Buzz at the Bottom

Next time we'll see how the various concepts we've discussed played out at Georgia Tech where four officials, including its executive vice president of administration and finance, were dismissed this past summer.