Author: gothamCulture

The Talent Retention Myth: A Devil’s Advocate Viewpoint

By gothamCulture
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We hear it all the time, the continuous chatter of experts reiterating the same old talking points about what organizations need to do to retain and engage a younger workforce. All this talk got me thinking.

What if we got it all wrong? What if we are being held captive by our own beliefs and assumptions about the very nature and structure of work in today’s society?

Common thinking is that we, as leaders of organizations, should retain talent as long as possible in order to capitalize on things like organizational knowledge, relationships with co-workers and vendors and that, somehow, employees who stay with us will be eternally motivated and highly productive team members. We may also subscribe to the risk mitigation side of the argument, seeking to keep talent to avoid the costs, financial and otherwise, of having to recruit new talent to fill in the gaps that departing employees leave.

The issue with this philosophy is that we are basing these rationales on our own (older generational) beliefs that the longer the tenure of the employee the more productive, engaged and fulfilled they are. We equate tenure with loyalty and loyalty is a sought after attribute. Workers of the millennial generation, and younger, don’t necessarily view their experience with one employer from a permanence perspective. Instead, they move from job to job, and organization to organization, in a constant effort to find a place where they can make a meaningful contribution and develop.

What if, rather than trying our best to hold onto younger employees and satisfying our own needs, we redesigned work to be accomplished by people who would give us their all while they were with us, but who could also quickly and easily pass the knowledge onto new generations of employees when they moved on? Rather than fighting against the values and trends of the times, what if we embraced the values of younger generations and evolved the way in which we do business to capitalize on a more consistent stream of new and fresh viewpoints and ideas? What if, instead of spending mounting resources trying to retain talent, we used those resources elsewhere and flexed our way of thinking to thrive in a new age of business?

With the speed of change in organizations today, is the job even the same thing it was two or three years ago? One might argue that many jobs today evolve rather quickly and the gains of retaining talent are a bit overstated. Let’s think about re-designing work and re-shaping organizational cultures to take advantage of new talent that fills these roles over time.

The Importance of Learning from (and About) Others

By gothamCulture
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At gothamCulture we talk about culture all the time. Like, all the time. This stems from our belief that at the center of an engaged workforce and an organizations’ performance, whether you define that as a healthy bottom line or degree of social impact, lies its culture. Culture reveals itself in many ways, from the plaque on your office door to the policies that guide how you work, but none more important than how you engage with your colleagues.

As we start a new year, my guess is that a lot of us have professional ambitions on our list of resolutions for 2014, probably just under “lose weight/join gym”. This is great – no one believes in finding professional fulfillment more than we do here at gC. But if you’re feeling antsy and annoyed in a job and are ready to throw in the towel, consider this (incredibly uncomfortable) lesson I learned last month.

I spent a November weekend in an unusual training many social psychologists subject themselves to during their education: a Group Relations conference. Using the word “conference” doesn’t quite call up the right image, because the purpose of this conference wasn’t to ideate around the newest innovations or complete continuing education credits while enjoying a new conference tote and swag. The purpose is simply just to be in groups. Just be….in groups. Over the course of three days we sat in big groups and small groups, self-organized groups and assigned groups. Without an agenda, keynote speaker, facilitator or assignment, the central focus became the words we used and how we chose to relate to each other. (If you feel uncomfortable just reading this, imagine how I and 74 of my new friends felt after three straight days.)

At one point over the weekend, we self-organized into groups and were then encouraged to interact with other the groups that had formed. Conflict theory teaches us that when you fail to see another person in full context, you tend to make up stories to explain any unpleasant behavior. Throw in a little negative emotion and your working relationship goes from water cooler chit chat to sending covert emails to your friends riddled with four letter descriptors. At the conference, you would have thought the walls separating our groups were actually borders separating countries. Because we could only guess at what was happening in the other rooms, our defenses went up fast and my teammates and I were quickly swept up in how convinced we were that everyone else was rejecting us. Every intergroup interaction was entered into with skepticism and doubt about the other’s motives. But when all groups came together toward the end of the weekend, I was surprised to find that my group was not, in fact, the social outcast. In fact, nearly every group thought it had been rejected, too. It was a tremendous “a ha” moment for me when I realized just how rich those stories we wrote about what went on on the other side of the wall were.

Which brings me back to culture, how we choose to engage with others and your list of resolutions. If you are struggling with your boss, so much so that you’re ready to throw up your hands and saunter out the door, consider what’s actually going on behind her wall. It might not be what you think. If you’re a leader whose team or organization is always a little toxic and people just don’t seem to jive, consider the amount of transparency that is (or isn’t) there between you. It’s amazing what just 10 minutes of honest and vulnerable communication can do to clear up years of misconceptions. Consider a resolution to learn more instead of to up and leave. Your own health, and that of your company, will be better off for it. No gym required.

Leadership Drift: How Not to Get Caught Up In Tactics

By gothamCulture
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Leadership drift is a dangerous trap. Have you ever felt like you’re moving so fast and reacting to all the things around you that you aren’t clear about what you’re doing – or why you’re doing it? Leadership drift, a term first coined by leadership guru Bob Lee, is a common phenomenon that many leaders face. Rather than dealing with complex, strategic issues and opportunities that can really propel you, your team, and the business forward, leaders get caught up in fire fighting and dealing with tactical issues that prevent them from achieving optimal performance.

What are some signs of leadership drift?

  • You’re solving problems that that tend to be technical in nature and could be tackled by other people who are lower on the organizational chart.
  • You’ve not expressed your vision about where you want your organization to go lately, so others aren’t clear and aligned about the direction you’re heading.
  • People on your team (and you for that matter) aren’t clear about how the team needs to work together to accomplish all that its setting out to do.
  • You’re burned out and can’t remember why you took this leadership role in the first place!

Given those signs, what are some things that you can do to avoid leadership drift?

  • Be deliberate about setting time aside to self-reflect.
    • Ask: What is my vision and is how I am showing up as a leader helping or hindering our success?
  • Create space for your team to “press pause” and think about what they are doing and why they are doing it; you’ll probably find that there is a lot of energy being spent on things that aren’t actually all that important.
    • Ask: Based on our collective purpose, what about the way we work is working? And what’s not? Do we have the right communication, decision-making and accountability mechanisms in place?
  • Build a community of leaders aimed at exchanging best practices about leading effectively and discussing strategies for overcoming obstacles.
    • Ask: As leaders, what can we learn from each other? What are we doing that’s working that we should share with one another?

Net – net: Catch the drift before it’s become a problem – you and your team could end up in a destination much different from the one you are targeting.

5 Tips For Turning A Performance Deficit Into Your Company’s Best Year Yet

By gothamCulture
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We all know that in a company’s big picture, consistently failing to meet performance goals can have dire repercussions. But falling short of these goals can also affect how a workplace functions on a day-to-day basis. Employees can lose passion for their work or even look for other, healthier companies. Their productivity is likely to fade alongside their enthusiasm.

That’s why it’s so important to keep on top of these performance failures and change course before small losses snowball into bigger ones. In this article, Chris Cancialosi discusses how you can take these failures and turn them into opportunities to make your company healthier and stronger.

Toxic Cultures: Where Does the Buck Stop?

By gothamCulture
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It’s been a long couple of weeks for New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie. With numerous political scandals coming to light and the Governor continuing to insist that he knew nothing of the alleged strong-arming of local politicians with opposing views, one must wonder- how do such cultures devolve to the point where staff members feel that it is acceptable to behave in such ways.

When scandals erupt, once publicly confident leaders who seem to have complete control of their organizations suddenly claim ignorance and rush to divert attention away from themselves. This happens more commonly than one might expect.

If unethical organizational behavior is known to leaders and tolerated, for whatever reason, the clear message to employees is that it is okay to behave in such ways. If the behavior occurs unbeknownst to the leader than the leader is not doing an effective job of supervising the people that work for him. Either way, the leader is at the root of the culture issue.

Four Signs Your Culture May be Toxic-

  1. Employees feel they can behave in unethical or unprofessional ways with little or no repercussion from their leadership.
  2. Leaders hold themselves to a different standard than they hold their people.
  3. When the going gets rough, leaders quickly look to blame someone or something else for the mishap rather than take responsibility.
  4. Employees are fearful that they cannot speak up in fear of retribution from leadership.

The buck really does stop with the leaders. And, they must intentionally cultivate employees’ beliefs about acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and the guidelines for behavior in the organization. With so many stakeholders looking more closely at the brands and companies they engage with these days, it pays to create an organizational dynamic where team members know exactly what’s expected of them. Otherwise, toxic cultures will kill themselves.

How To Manage Dynamic Tensions — And Master The Balancing Act

By gothamCulture
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At the core of good leadership is a skill shared by tightrope walkers and jugglers around the world: the balancing act. But in the business world, the tightropes are opposing workplace tensions and the juggling balls are stakeholders.

The trick to mastering this daunting feat? Find a way to manage seemingly opposing dynamic tensions — like stability and flexibility — to foster a clear set of expectations that allows for growth and innovation in an ever-evolving marketplace. In this article, Chris Cancialosi offers insight into how to manage these tensions to achieve an equilibrium that keeps engagement, performance, and productivity high.

Transforming Underperformers

By gothamCulture
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HR.com recruited gothamCulture’s Chris Cancialosi to weigh in on a hot topic for leaders – employee performance. The blog, “Understanding the Why: How to Turn an Underperformer into a Top Performer”, launched today on HR.Com. A company’s people drive high or low performance, and gothamCulture gets to the root of underperformance in the latest HR.com blog.

gothamCulture offers six straightforward steps for transforming your company’s underperformers into top performers. According to Chris, individual underperformance is often a symptom of a company’s process or structural issues. The blog emphasizes focus on root causes in the organizational system rather than individual remedies.

gothamCulture supports full-spectrum change efforts from vision and strategic planning through instructional design. gothamCulture offers increased alignment, engagement, and support for their government, public, and private clients. For more information, visit www.gothamculture.com. Follow us on Twitter @gothamCulture.

The Best Business Mistakes I’ve Ever Made

By gothamCulture
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Recently, I have been taking stock of my journey as an entrepreneur. I’ve realized that I had learned quite a bit the hard way. Making mistakes and learning from them, as an individual leader or as a team, is enormously beneficial. Now, I’m not advocating for making mistakes to make them, but I am suggesting that we don’t let a good mistake go to waste.

Making mistakes is part of leading. They are part of life. If we fear failure and bash those who make the occasional mistake, we stifle people’s ability to take risks and innovate and may find our competition leaving us in the dust.

In reflection on some of my most colossal blunders over the years, I came up with a list of key learnings that have helped me both professionally and personally.

#1. Bad decisions don’t get better with time. Decisiveness is critical in helping you move faster than the competition, but it also means sometimes having to make decisions without the benefit of reams of data to back them up. We all make poor decisions sometimes. The real shame is when we don’t admit the blunder and try to ride it out in hopes that things will get better. Being able to identify a misstep quickly and being decisive enough to course correct is critical to success.

#2. You’re not always the smartest person in the room. As an entrepreneur and leader of a team, I felt intense pressure to have all the answers. Looking back, I recognize my faulty assumption. I may have started the company, but I’m certainly not the only one with all the answers. We have a smart and creative team that analyzes things in very different ways than I do. This is an enormous source of strength for us as we discuss and debate business topics before making decisions. This diversity of thought helps keep me honest.

#3. Hope is not a plan. We started our business on a hope and a dream. What we quickly realized is that hope is not a plan. As our organization matured and we became more established leaders in our industry, we took tangible steps to be intentional about who we are, where we’re headed, and how we plan on getting there. With the assembly of our Board of Advisors, our market repositioning, our all-hands strategic planning processes and reviews, we developed a planning cadence that focuses our work effort throughout the year.

#4. Don’t be afraid to fail. Starting a new business was a terrifying experience. What I realized quickly, however, is that fully experiencing life is about taking risk. Now, I don’t mean a constant Vegas-style gamble, but I am an advocate for putting yourself out there in an uncomfortable situation where you very well may fail. Assess the situation and mitigate as much risk as possible to stack the deck in your favor, then execute with everything you’ve got and don’t stop until you’ve succeeded in your endeavors.

Theodore Roosevelt made a speech at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on April 23rd, 1910. I’ve memorized and carried part of this speech with me throughout my business endeavors:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

There is no great effort without some level of error and shortcoming. And when you make a mistake, don’t get so caught up in wringing your hands that you don’t capitalize on the learning opportunity.

Little Victories: How Big Change Really Occurs

By gothamCulture
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As the saying goes, even the longest journey starts with just one step.

Over the years, we have engaged with many clients who are dedicated to creating large-scale, significant, and sustainable changes in their organizations in an effort to drive success. Unfortunately, many of these well-intentioned executives believe that there is a silver bullet, or some grand gesture of change, that will accomplish their goals.

While significant changes can and do drive sustainable performance improvements, in my experiences, truly transformational change results from a few elusively simple things.

#1. Greater than the sum of its parts.

Large change is comprised of MANY small changes, or what I call little victories.

Think of any truly transformational change in society that has sustained the test of time, and I will show you a series of seemingly small steps that built upon each other toward the final outcome; events that very often inspired others to create little victories of their own. Those instances challenge the underlying beliefs and assumptions that people hold to be true about the current state.

#2. It takes a village.

One person can rarely create and sustain organizational change that is truly transformational. It takes dialogue that creates a spark in people to step up and do something differently themselves. Engaging everyone in not only having a voice but in having a responsibility to drive small change at their level helps to build momentum and sustainability of what could be.

#3. Shout it from the rooftops.

Find ways to communicate the little victories to the masses. Let the positive change go viral throughout your organization. Transformational change achieves terminal velocity through the stories that people tell. These stories bring change to life; if they are capitalized on, they reinforce the desired behavior change.

At the end of the day, silver bullets are just about as rare as werewolves. Real, transformational change takes careful forethought, the investment of time and energy, and the willingness to let people take ownership of it.

What’s your little victory?

Changing Organizational Culture

By gothamCulture
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One of the most common questions we are asked about organizational culture change is:

Should it be top down or bottom up?

The answer is: Yes.

Decades of leadership development research and common sense tells us that individuals at the highest levels in organizations have the most influence on the organization, as a whole, in the shortest time. But what about the tens, hundreds, or thousands of employees that keep the organization moving forward each and every day? Are they able to influence culture based on sheer number and longevity?

Influence works in both directions, so alignment of energy moving up and down the organization is key to culture change. A strategy that emerged from an initiative with one of gothamCulture’s clients is “top-down, bottom-up” (to be clear, the goal of this approach is to create an open organizational culture that values employees’ opinions and closes the distance between the frontline and executives). The trick to carrying out this strategy is to do both in concert.

It isn’t enough to set leadership loose with a plan to communicate the strategy of the organization and hope that everyone follows. This can result in leaders excitedly running up the metaphorical mountain of change and looking back to realize that no one is following. By the same token, it isn’t enough to provide a survey to engage employees without leaders taking action to address survey results.

Here are some “top-down, bottom-up” lessons we’ve learned over the years:

* Communicate strategically to inform everyone of happenings around the organization. Designate a small team to act as the nucleus to drive communication efforts and translate information coming from the top and bottom. A dynamic communication system is critical to a lean and nimble organization that can compete in today’s business environment.

* Ask employees how to move the organization forward and carry out the initiatives worth pursuing. They are closest to the issues that may derail your plans.

* Provide “face time” for the frontline to meet executives and share concerns and ideas. This doesn’t mean a token executive appearance at a ‘town hall’; we’re talking about creating space for these groups to roll up their sleeves and work together.

* Listen to the workforce with sincerity and empathy. Today’s employees expect their jobs to be fulfilling, challenging, and worth investing time into (which is often more important to retention than compensation packages).