Author: gothamCulture

Forbes: How to Communicate Change

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,

When Microsoft announced it was laying off 12,500 employees in a 1,100-word email, it inadvertently sparked a discussion on company communication. How can business leaders effectively communicate company changes to their staff? What is the protocol?

Big or small, changes are changes, and they need to be reported to employees accordingly. By approaching discussions with factors like timeliness in mind, leaders can have more success in talking with their teams.

In this article, and with added insight from Jenny Dervin, the former Vice President of Corporate Communications for JetBlue, Chris Cancialosi outlines three lessons to be learned from Microsoft’s recent layoff.

Moving Toward a Code of Ethics for Data

By gothamCulture
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In my previous post, I talked about the status of Big Data.  In this post, I’d like to discuss some of the ethical issues we’re facing in the data world.

We are at an interesting crossroads between data and culture.  Today, we have the ability to collect and analyze large amounts of data (much of it from social media) but our increased use of data is changing how we view concepts such as privacy and confidentiality.  In light of the NSA Surveillance debate and a recent thought experiment from Facebook, people are beginning to question the boundaries between acceptable and not acceptable use of personal data.

This is more of a question of ethics than anything else, but it will likely become an integral aspect of how companies engage consumers and define their brand and image. In this new environment, some of the challenges businesses and consumers face include:

  1. The nature of private vs. public information: What does privacy actually consist of when we are all connected through social networks?
  2. The confidentiality vs. profitability of information: Is data kept “in-house” or is it sold for use by other businesses?
  3. The use of analytics to serve the customer vs. “manipulate” the customer: Are analytics used to better understand customer preferences or to subtly sway the customer and restrict their choices?

It doesn’t take long to realize that there is a fine line that separates these areas.  In many cases, the distinction is blurred and hashing out the details will require a broader social conversation that weighs the costs (in terms of privacy) with the benefits (in terms of improved customer service) of our growing reliance on analytics.  On the one hand, there is uncertainty surrounding how our data and information is used, while on the other hand, we gain the ability to more precisely fulfill consumer needs and even improve more fundamental factors such as the safety and reliability of the products we purchase.

These are key questions organizations need to ask, especially with regard to how they define their mission to customers.  They also have implications for how an organization is perceived publicly and the type of culture they embrace internally (see Chris Cancialosi’s article on establishing a Leadership Brand).  When launching a new data-driven initiative (whether Big Data or conventional), there are several questions to consider:

  1. Could it cause significant distress to a customer by revealing potentially embarrassing or unwanted information?
  2. Are you trying to understand a customer or strongly steer their behavior?  Does it sound eerily similar to something out of 1984 or Brave New World?
  3. How secure is the data from potential hackers?  What are the associated risks?
  4. What is the problem this initiative will solve?  What is the method to acquire the data, and how is it better than other options?

These are complicated questions that won’t be answered any time soon and there are a number of different perspectives on what needs to happen (see here, here, and here for some examples).  At the end of the day, the key question is one of tolerance: how much “privacy” are consumers willing to give up for the benefits data provides (see my post for an example of this trade-off)?  This will be different for each person, so it is important for consumers and organizations to become educated in understanding how data is used, weigh the costs and the benefits, and make informed choices.

Five Ways To Change Your Company Culture

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,

Free donuts can only accomplish so much. Sure, they’re tasty, and the sugar rush can help you make it through the next 30 minutes, but are they really boosting company culture or just your blood sugar?

If you want to see a real difference in your company, you don’t have to wait for your CEO or department head to introduce the next great idea. You have the power to initiate changes to boost your fellow employees’ motivation and your company’s bottom line.

Designing Leadership Development for Organizational Impact

By gothamCulture
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Data. Metrics. Impact. Evaluation.

These key words are only becoming more dominant in organizational life as we have increased our capacity to collect, process and analyze larger amounts of data. But what are we really measuring? Often times, when we think about program evaluation, especially leadership development programs, we ask people if they liked the program and if they learned something useful and call it a day. What we forget is that just liking a program or learning something does not always translate into organizational impact.

And in fact, participants might even say they didn’t like a particular experience, but at the same time, it was one of the most transformative experiences that they have ever had. Additionally, when we think about impactful learning, we often think about the importance of inducing a bit of “productive discomfort” in the participant as a means of creating a transformational learning experience. This also might not be ranked so highly on the smiley scale. Clearly, measuring impact is important, but measuring impact only from participants’ on-the-spot evaluations falls short.

Just as connection to mission, intentionality, and advanced stakeholder alignment are crucial to designing and evaluating any initiative, they are also critical when designing and evaluating leadership development initiatives in a way that has a clear, measurable impact. Thus, it is crucial to intentionally engage all of the key stakeholders early in the process of designing the leadership development program and create metrics of success together.

As key stakeholders, participants should also be included in the process of designing metrics because they will be the ones doing the learning. Additionally, if they understand and are involved in designing their own goals for the leadership development experience it will be that much more powerful.

And of course, these metrics of success should be tied to organizational mission or bottom line results, or else why is the organization spending resources on it? For example, one measure of impact could be that at least 90% of participants will receive higher rankings from their direct reports in their next 6-month 360 in a pre-determined aspect of leadership that has been deemed crucial to organizational success (tied to mission or bottom line).

Knowing and agreeing upon these metrics from the beginning creates more opportunity for having broader organizational impact because the starting point of reference is grounded in organizational impact rather than creating a positive individual experience. While measuring organizational impact of leadership development initiatives might be more of an art than a science, this challenge is no excuse not to try to think in terms of impact and metrics.

Put Away the Winter Boots! (It’s Time for a Change)

By gothamCulture
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When the weather gets warmer, we instinctively shove our hats and gloves into the back of the closet and pull out our sandals. The obvious change in weather or climate is easily felt and clues us in to the reality that the objects we might have needed last week or last month are not going to serve us well today or next month.

Organizational climates evolve in the same way that the weather does, yet we often continue to do the same processes that we did before. We can all think of that mandatory in-person meeting/conference that started back when so and so was in charge but is no longer an effective use of time. Or what about certain policies around working remotely that don’t reflect the current technology at the organization?

These relics from a different climate or season are often continued because no one has noticed that the meeting or policy etc. is no longer serving the organization. Or if it is noticed, those individuals trying to be agents for change often find themselves facing resistance. It is because that meeting or policy is embedded in the organization’s culture, or as we call it, a part of “the way we do things around here.” Changing a culture is hard, yet if we can understand the resistance to the change, it is possible to create opportunities for change. First, however, it is imperative to understand what is working about the meeting or the thing we’re trying to change and where the resistance to that change is coming from.

For example, in the case of trying to cancel an in-person meeting or conference where employees are resistant because they enjoy and feel appreciation through the free food/lodging provided during the meeting, one solution could be to give employees a stipend to buy their own food and/or a vacation bonus and then attend remotely. This continues what’s working (free food/lodging and appreciation) while saving the organization travel time and costs for holding an onsite meeting. Or if people enjoy seeing each other face-to-face but the meeting is not deemed a good use of time perhaps the meeting agenda, leader, frequency or length could be adjusted to increase the likelihood that it is an effective use of everyone’s time.

In short—it’s necessary for your organization to have a level of cultural awareness and a willingness to change when organizational needs are not being achieved and processes could be improved. Just like we wouldn’t want to be caught wearing our snow boots in July, we shouldn’t get stuck continuing to do things at the organization because they met the needs of a previous organizational climate.

How Leaders Can Fight Impostor Syndrome

By gothamCulture
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Leading at the top of the organization is lonely. According to a recent study called by The School for CEOs, 93% of top leaders require intensive preparation to take over an organization. Technical skill gaps that a leader faces as they take on positions of greater responsibility, such as making decisions about organizational structure and managing various stakeholder groups, often times receive more attention than some of the emotional and psychological hurdles they face. Impostor syndrome, for example, a major phenomenon that many leaders experience as they navigate a more complex landscape often causes people feeling ill-equipped to do the job. This has real performance implications both at a personal level and for the organization.

Leaders that experience impostor syndrome generally feel like a fraud. Often times, the story that replays in their minds is that they are going to be “found out”. In fact they often attribute their success to other factors – “ I was in the right place at the right time” or “I ended up here because I got lucky”. It’s also common to see executives that suffer from impostor syndrome not taking credit for their accomplishments. And if they do, they are usually pretty convinced that they won’t be successful the second time around.

It turns out that execs with impostor syndrome, tend not be vulnerable and this lack of vulnerability inevitably leads to a lack of self-awareness and development . To overcome this, creating a peer support system that can become a trusted network of advisors and serve as a go-to resource can be helpful. Working with an executive coach to look at some of the underlying beliefs and assumptions that are driving certain behaviors and then creating strategies to overcome them can also be of tremendous value. So if you or someone you know is feeling like an impostor, it’s normal and there are things that can be done to address it.

Organizational Culture, Talent Management and Onboarding Across the Generational Divide

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,

Recent articles such as “Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem” and “The Brutal Ageism of Tech” highlight and reinforce the importance of adhering to some crucial tenets when thinking about organizational culture and onboarding across the generational divide.

1. Your organization’s culture will impact what kind of talent you attract.

Policies for employees are a critical part of your organizational culture, or “the way we do things around here.” For example, guidelines like a minimum vacation allowance rather than a maximum limit, the frequency and energy at organizational happy hours, and the expectations around working hours might attract younger employees. Conversely, policies such as paternity leave, stock options, retirement contributions and a set 9-5 schedule will likely attract an older demographic.

2. This culture you created and the talent you attracted will also impact how you onboard them. If the culture values innovation, trial and error and is moving quickly, and then the onboarding process might involve some shadowing of a colleague, personalized coaching and meeting with some more tenured colleagues for learning about a deeper sense of organizational mission, history, and values. However, if the culture values structure, hierarchical process, consistency and might be in a less of a hurry, a more formal, standardized onboarding process could be necessary to make sure that the new employee will be perform consistently and with clear expectations.

It’s crucial to remember that no culture is necessarily “better” or “worse” nor is there a “better” or “worse” approach to talent management or training. What is critical, however, is to ensure that your organizational culture and onboarding is intentionally designed in such a way to attract and train the talent you need to be successful as an organization. This alignment between culture and talent and training is one often overlooked piece of the puzzle in achieving your organization’s mission and well worth a close look.

Engaging, Sticky, and Effective

By gothamCulture
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I’ve seen a lot of professionals forget what they’ve learned through training programs. And I’m not talking here about detail and minutia – but about the KEY objectives and takeaways. If they’ve forgotten those, they’ve wasted a lot of time and money. And, those two things are in short supply these days.

Many people turn to Experiential Learning to deliver the “sticky” (Heath Brothers, I’m looking at you), because making things sticky isn’t just important. It is essential. Nigel Rayment wrote a recent Huffington Post piece regarding Experiential Learning that got me thinking:

Given his take, the question becomes: Are your experiential learning programs really learning programs?

Consider Rayment’s criteria:

  • Specific learning outcomes: The outcome of the exercise must be specific and have depth
  • Participants should understand their starting point: no guesswork here…as Covey taught us all, “Begin with the end in mind”
  • Structured learning cycle: experience, discuss, learn, apply, review
  • Interact with the participants: this is a facilitative approach
  • Debriefing is a key: immediate and intentional discussion
  • Structured re-assessment: sustain the impact of the learning, rinse/repeat

If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to all six, there is a danger that your experiential learning programs aren’t achieving the desired results. If that is the case, you’d either have to revise the experiential learning program to meet the criteria, or consider the real possibility that experiential learning isn’t the right answer for this instance. (Option 3 could then potentially be that it is time to vacation…?)

I started using this criterion in my consulting practice,hesitatingly at first, because I feared the worst: that my experiential learning approach might have been engaging, innovative, and TOTALLY without value. Let me report: it has been a great test. Where I thought such a structured approach would inhibit the enjoyment factor and creativity of the designs, it has been just the opposite. Instead, the structure has been liberating, and given me permission to add additional creative wattage. And clients have noticed. The connections to mission, “real” work, daily impact have been tangible for them. First, in the session, and in the weeks to come, I’ve heard positive feedback regarding the effectiveness of the sessions.

Building a ‘Get Ahead to Stay Ahead’ Culture

By gothamCulture
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I was surprised when the cup of coffee I bought the other morning was handed to me in a styrofoam cup. A few months back, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced legislation that would ban all styrofoam containers from the city’s restaurants. The measure still sits in debate, hence my Saturday morning cup of joe’s ability to stay steaming hot on my subway ride up Manhattan’s west side. Mid-train ride I got to thinking about the styrofoam lobby (yes, that exists) and their fight against the ban, which is understandable considering that the country’s most populous city could initiate a domino effect of anti-styrofoam campaigns. Could there be another way? Where is innovation happening?

I’m no scientist, but I have to believe that with the right brains in the right rooms, those styrofoam guys could come up with a new type of packaging that is better for the environment yet still keeps things toasty inside. So why haven’t they?

The most successful companies are the ones who don’t wait until their star starts to set before they begin to think about new ways of doing business. Still, too many wait to innovate until they’re in a crisis situation, and crawling out of that hole is difficult if not impossible.

But what is less obvious about these successful, cutting-edge companies is that all that creativity doesn’t just live in the R&D department, but throughout the organization. The right organizational culture makes it possible for innovation to occur.

As my colleague Ashley recently wrote, innovation requires promotion of risk-taking and acceptance of failure throughout your company. Research also shows that people are more creative when they have a supportive work community, autonomy, projects they perceive as challenging, time and space to focus on those challenges, a mindset friendly to ambiguity and enough wiggle room to try something new – whether that’s creating a new breakthrough product or simply revamping the way the department organizes documents.

gC worked with a client to design a leadership summit last month for one of most important revenue-driving divisions within a global powerhouse company – a division of nearly 1000 people. At the summit, the division leader proudly told the story of a junior employee who had an idea for improving a crucial process. She took the idea to her manager, who elevated it quickly to the top. Her idea is now changing the way the division does business, increasing efficiency and productivity. Imagine if their company’s culture wasn’t flexible enough to incorporate new ideas or even allow space for them to percolate, empowering of its junior (and senior) employees, or willing to try a new way of working while knowing full well it might fail?

As a leader, being open to the ambiguity required for your organization’s culture to stay innovative isn’t easy. But then think, when’s the last time you drank out of styrofoam cup?

How Company Culture Can Make or Break Your Business

By gothamCulture
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First published in Fast Company, March 6, 2014.

We are excited to share Chris’s inaugural Fast Company post. Here’s a quick snippet:

“Culture is a relentless driver of employee behavior. Left to its own devices, it can potentially limit an organization. But if leaders work to define it, assess it, and understand it, culture can be used as a tangible business lever to directly achieve goals and improve performance.”

He goes on to share the four key components needed to translate culture into something people can relate to, and invest in:

  1. A SOLID MODEL
  2. TOOLS FOR UNDERSTANDING
  3. PROCESSES TO IMPLEMENT
  4. TURNING DATA INTO ACTION

For more, read the full piece and feel free to join the discussion on “culture translation” by commenting here. We’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.