“That’s just the way we do it” – Something I’ve heard countless times from leaders and their reports in response to my question, “Why do you [fill in the blank]?”. I am surprised by how little careful thought we tend to give to why we do the things we do in the workplace.

This led me to wonder – why? If an organization’s culture is a collection of lessons that helped it grow and survive, it is only sensible that members of the group would look to past successful behavior for future guidance. Over time, provided these behaviors yield positive results, management develops processes to ensure that these effective behaviors occur and that positive outcomes are achieved in more and more consistent ways. Eventually, people aren’t consciously thinking about why they do what they do. They do what they’ve always done because it seems to have worked for them in the past.

Adding to the potential risk of this work on autopilot is the “noise” of the day-to-day. As people scramble to tackle to-do’s, they oftentimes don’t feel they have the luxury to think critically about why it is they do what they do.

This, in and of itself, wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing…if we worked in a bubble where our environment didn’t change. But when behaviors that have historically yielded success cease to do so, people start to ask themselves why they are doing what they do. Unfortunately, by then, it may be too late.

Truly exceptional leaders are those who constantly ask the question, “Why?”. Effective leaders are those who push others to examine why they do things the way they do them and inspire them to understand the marketplace and question the efficacy of their behavior.

When is the last time you stopped and asked the question, “Why do I do the things I do?”. The answer may surprise you.

In our ongoing effort to share some of our lessons learned over the years, we thought that it would be interesting to ask some of our closest partners for their insight on topics that are most relevant to our readers. Rob O’Sullivan, Executive Producer, Director, and Founder of Main Gate Productions, supports our client work by providing end-to-end video production services to support large-scale change efforts and to support training and development initiatives.

Chris Cancialosi: How do folks in the field leverage video production services to enhance their communications efforts while managing tight budgets?

Rob O’Sullivan: When I first took over the Advanced Services group at Comcast, I was full of excitement and ideas. A five-year veteran of an organization that had gone through numerous mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring, I was ready to execute the vision of our corporate leadership and transform the way Comcast developed, implemented, and supported new products. It didn’t take long to understand that immediate change was no easy task.

Being a part of an organization of almost 100,000 employees, and having responsibility for implementing standards across 20% of that population, made the need for quick and effective communications through each tier of the organization critical to our success. The Comcast executive team did a great job in communicating key business objectives to the employee base on a quarterly basis through corporate broadcast events, but once that hour was over, the effect of those communications would often become fragmented. Email became the primary communication tool, and with most people receiving over a hundred emails per meeting-filled day, it wasn’t surprising to hear someone say, “I didn’t get to that email.”

Email isn’t the only way to facilitate internal communications, and it’s certainly not the most effective. Unfortunately, it seems to have become the norm. Organizations must leverage other media to reach their employee base real-time.

How? Video.

Effective change management execution is about storytelling. To capitalize on the most impactful aspects of the change narrative, the use of video to communicate the key points of that story has become a necessity. Video evokes emotion and provides real-world examples that written communications just can’t accomplish. Video communications through web and mobile platforms afford management teams the unique opportunity to communicate important messages in real-time. In today’s busy work environment, you can only expect short windows of attention. Video allows you to develop 30-60 second snapshots that will get a message out, tell a quick story, or provide a key update. It also provides a much more dynamic and emotive synopsis of a large change initiative that can be archived and viewed for years to come.

To effectively break down the communications walls, there are a few things organizations can adopt to quickly see an impact.

1. Use mobile video: Smartphones, tablets, and mobile computing are modern realities of business communications, and time is becoming more precious. The ability to reach your employees where they are – on the train, waiting for a meeting to start, at their desks, or on the move – maximizing those precious seconds in a way that has the greatest impact is the challenge. Video snippets of executive sound bites, examples of values in action in the workplace, communication of business goals and priorities, and involving front line employees executing priorities and initiatives through the use of video is a tangible, compelling communication strategy that can be viewed anytime, anywhere.
2. Rapid competitive response: The competitive landscape changes daily. Organizations need to be able to quickly react and communicate in order to stay ahead of the competition. The ability to quickly promote new initiatives, showcase new products, or strengthen confidence can be made that much more effective by leveraging video for internal and external communications.
3. Cut costs while increasing reach: With corporate purse strings tightening, the ability to fly employees to a central location for training or meetings is becoming cost prohibitive. However, the ability to stream a video of an executive meeting, sales conference, or other event and archive that footage for reference has never been easier. These days everyone in your organization can participate in a conference real time, then quickly return, respond, and enact the corporate strategy.

Business is not going to slow down, and the need for effective communication vehicles will only increase. Now is the time to adopt video into your messaging strategy.

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?

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).