Org Culture

gothamCulture Releases Findings From the 2022 State of Culture Study

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
2022 State of Culture artwork

New York, NY – gothamCulture released its second annual State of Culture Report on December 30, 2022. 

The 2022 State of Culture Report is the culmination of a year of research on a global scale of 170 respondents across local, national, and global organizations. From this research, the team extracted key insights into the aspects of organizational culture and climate that link to a variety of performance outcomes as well as the practices that drive results in the day-to-day. 

 Some key findings from the study include: 

  • Only 57% of respondents in senior leadership roles reported that their organization cultures are evolving rapidly enough to stay competitive.
  • 70% of respondent organizations reported outsourcing at least some HR functions, and it seems that outsourcing in the HR space will continue to grow over time. .
  • Organizations that reported a large number of resignations said it was mostly due to inadequate pay/benefits and a lack of ongoing investment in employee skills.

 For more insights to read the 2022 State of Culture Report here. 

Stay up to date with future State of Culture surveys and reports here. 

If you have questions or comments about the study or the report please email info@gothamculture.com.  

 About gothamCulture 

gothamCulture is a management consulting firm that draws on our associate’s comprehensive expertise and experience in the areas of culture, leadership, and people strategy to provide innovative solutions and client-service excellence. Our work is guided by our deeply held shared values, including a commitment to each other and our clients, unwavering integrity, the maniacal pursuit of excellence, relatable expertise, and authentic community. For more information, visit www.gothamCulture.com. 

gothamCulture and Global Organizational Culture Institute (GOCI) Releases 2021 State of Culture Report

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,

Press Release

July 7, 2021

New York, NY – gothamCulture and the Global Organizational Culture Institute (GOCI) released the first annual 2021 State of Culture Report on July 7, 2021.

The 2021 State of Culture Report is the culmination of a year of research on a global scale of 241 respondents across local, national, and global organizations. From this research, we extracted key insights into the aspects of organizational culture and climate that link to a variety of performance outcomes as well as the practices that drive results in the day-to-day.

Some key findings from the study include:

  • Having a common culture definition and leadership involvement in setting the definition can have a significantly positive impact on organizations’ performance.
  • It is valuable for organizations to invest in the appropriate assessment of culture in order to proactively shape it to meet the needs of their situation and achieve performance.
  • It is important for organizations to demonstrate serious consideration and thought when it comes to social justice issues as it significantly impacts their performance.

For more insights to read the entire 2021 State of Culture Report.

Stay up to date with future State of Culture surveys and reports.

About gothamCulture
gothamCulture is a management consulting firm that draws on our associate’s comprehensive expertise and experience in the areas of culture, leadership, and people strategy to provide innovative solutions and client-service excellence. Our work is guided by our deeply held shared values, including a commitment to each other and our clients, unwavering integrity, the maniacal pursuit of excellence, relatable expertise, and authentic community. For more information, visit www.gothamCulture.com.

About the Global Organizational Culture Institute (GOCI)
Founded in 2020, the Global Organizational Culture Institute (GOCI) is dedicated to conducting research on the topic of organizational culture in order to understand what factors drive performance outcomes. GOCI’s research serves as the foundation for the annual State of Culture Study and associated reports. Learn more at: www.globalstateofculturestudy.com

 

The 6 Processes That Make or Break Your Change Efforts

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog, Recommended Tags: ,

As organizations begin to implement their change initiatives and re-establish the way they do work, I cannot help but think about the body of knowledge I worked with during my time in graduate school around covert processes at work. Robert Marshak describes six dimensions that impact any organizational change plan that need to be addressed to ensure the success of that effort. In a previous article, I discussed the different themes organizations need to consider as they set up their ‘return to office’ (or not) strategies. In this article, I will be covering Marshak’s work on hidden covert processes that you will need to keep an eye out for and consider to ensure your organizational change plan is implemented and managed successfully.

To start, what are covert processes?
Unlike overt processes, which can be observed, covert processes are hidden, unspoken, and unacknowledged. They are the collective unconscious dynamics that exist within organizations that regularly impact the interactions and responses of people within the organization. If change management leaders do not account for them in their plans, these processes or dimensions can impact the workflow and stand in the way of achieving organizational goals and change objectives. It is important to know that covert dynamics occur outside of our awareness and you and your employees can be engaging in them without knowing it.

The 6 dimensions of change
Marshak lists six dimensions of change: Reason, Politics, Inspirations, Emotions, Mindset, and Psychodynamics. The first is the only overt dimension out of the six whereas the latter 5 are covert. Read More…

Establishing your return to office strategy can feel daunting. Here is where to start!

By gothamCulture
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Return to the office themes

Over the last year, business leaders and organizational development experts have been emphasizing the strategic priority of figuring out what the ‘return to work’, or more accurately, ‘return to office’ is going to look like. We heard about ‘hybrid models’, ‘permanently remote models’, and ‘rotating shifts models’. While all of these ideas might be great in theory, the specifics still seem fuzzy to most. With restrictions being eased and more and more people getting vaccinated, the pressure to have ready-to-launch plans that answer all of the diverse workforce needs is on more than ever.

I recently attended an interactive seminar on change leadership with a group of 30 or so organizational development experts and HR leaders to explore how real-life organizations will need to address the challenges of returning to the office (or not). We huddled up and discussed actionable change management plans we would implement to make the transition successful. My colleagues in the virtual room had brilliant ideas to share, and it was evident that while there was agreement around some aspects of the change management plans, people had very different ideas of what needed to be done. And they all seemed like really good ideas. Read More…

Don’t Think An Organizational Culture Can Change? Think Again.

By gothamCulture
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organizational culture adapt

Organizational culture – that all-encompassing and always elusive aspect of organizational functioning that impacts and guides everything that happens or fails to happen within a group. It affects every aspect of our daily lives and interactions at work whether we are conscious of it or not. Whether we like the results or not. This omnipresence can make the topic of organizational culture a lot for people to try to wrap their heads around let alone change. If we think about the topic of organizational culture simply as “the way work gets done”, it can seem like a near impossibility that it can adapt and change.

Difficult, yes. Impossible, no. Any number of internal or external factors can shape the culture of an organization at varying rates. Catalysts such as mergers and acquisitions, adoption of new technologies, the transition of a key leader or leaders, new government regulations, or an unanticipated global pandemic can all force people to adopt new behaviors to adapt the way work gets done in order to survive and compete. Read More…

Recognizing A Toxic Work Culture Before You Get In Too Deep

By gothamCulture
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Toxic Work Culture

Maybe I’m the one wearing rose-colored glasses, but I refuse to believe that most leaders wake up every morning intentionally trying to create a toxic work culture. Why is it then that there seems to be a constant flow of breaking news stories of employees sharing claims of workplace toxicity stretching from The Ellen Degeneres Show, to the Washington Metro, to a slew of tech companies like Weta Digital? Even the Hawaii Department of Health recently became the target of allegations from a whistleblower about the effects that a toxic work culture had on epidemiologists’ efforts in contact tracing in response to COVID-19.

With tensions running high these last months as organizations grapple with massive disruptions stemming from the pandemic, one might assume that tensions are high due to losses in revenue and profits, elevated levels of professional and personal uncertainty, layoffs, and furloughs it is not surprising that many leaders may be reverting to their most instinctive flight or flight mentalities. We’ve seen similar things happen in years past as organizations met with disruptions that shook them to their core. We’ve observed leaders in these situations become overwhelmed to the point where they make knee-jerk decisions in an attempt to navigate the storm. Read More…

Organizational Agility And Resilience – Two Critical Sides Of The Same Coin

By gothamCulture
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Agility and Resilience

In a world where longstanding business models are being disrupted (many at the hand of a staggering rate of technological advances), you won’t get ten paces without hearing terms like agility and resilience being thrown around. This dynamic has seen the rise of brands like Amazon/Whole Foods, Netflix, and Uber as well as the demise of others like Kodak who failed to see and respond quickly enough to changes in the market. If you’re reading this and thinking that this isn’t something that applies to you, you’re sadly mistaken. Even historically stable industries are being disrupted in ways that require the ability to adapt and transform in order to thrive.

The belief that organizations must master the ability to innovate and drive new products and services to market in order to beat out the competition has contributed to the focus on agility as a critical success factor. These organizations must “fail fast”, quickly learn from mistakes, and adapt to changing market conditions in order to outperform their competitors in the long-term.

Read More…

The Interdependent Nature of Culture and Process

By gothamCulture
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It may not be intuitive to link something that is perceived to be as nebulous and qualitative as company culture to a quantitative, very nuts-and-bolts concept like internal business process. Surprisingly, these two concepts are much more interdependent than what meets the eye.

Internal business process is dependent on the thoughts, beliefs, norms, and behaviors of those tasked with adhering to it. On the other hand, company culture is woven into many aspects of an organization, including its systems and processes. Companies and teams with misaligned cultures can expect to experience more deviant behavior from their employees for a host of different reasons. This can include deviation from the norms surrounding internal business processes, where employees tend to complete tasks in their own way or build their own “way of doing things” altogether. If the culture is misaligned across the organization, shared accountability suffers and can perpetuate more variance in the way people accomplish their tasks. Read More…

The Art Of Unlearning What Works

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
typewriter

As an organizational psychologist and a firm believer in continuous development, I have often found myself in the position of advising people on creative ways to keep learning throughout their careers. I have worked with clients seeking to become “learning organizations” – where individuals and teams are continuing to figure out what works through learning in order to outperform their competitors. Research, experiment, succeed, fail, learn, improve, repeat.

As someone who has dedicated his professional life to the topic of organizational culture, I realize that groups of people, over time and through collective experience, figure out what works and what doesn’t. Doing so allows them to begin to bake into their organization’s systems and processes methods for repeating successes and minimizing failures (or they cease to exist). Doing so allows members of these organizations to routinize processes and behaviors that lead to success so they can utilize their mental capacity on other things. Easy enough in theory.

The real challenge presents itself when the old ways of doing things that once yielded success stop working (or stop working as well as they once did). It is during these times that I often get people reaching out to me to help them figure out what to do in order to right the ship before things go too far afoul. In all of these situations, some common realities have bubbled up that are important to acknowledge.

Read More…

Your Company Culture And The Uniqueness Paradox

By gothamCulture
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Organizational Stories

Advising senior leaders on the topic of organizational culture for the last fifteen plus years has provided me with a multitude of opportunities to examine the ways in which groups of people organize themselves to accomplish their work and to achieve their mission. There are a wide variety of methods that I use when helping clients to understand the cultures of their organizations. One of these methods is engaging members of a client organization in order to listen to and attempt to make meaning of the stories that are told.

Stories have served a critical purpose in organizing groups of people for thousands of years. Stories are engaging ways to educate members of a group about what is valued by the group. What the group expects from its members. What gets rewarded and what gets people punished. Stories spark different areas of our brains than other forms of communication and this is why they have, and continue to be, utilized to share important ideas amongst and across groups of people.

Stories, due to their unique contextual factors, tend to reinforce the belief that each is a special, one-of-a-kind thing. Stories are not the only organizational phenomenon that foster the belief that organizations and their cultures are unique and special snowflakes but, in reality, organizational cultures and the stories that are shared within them share many commonalities in terms of structure, delivery, and ultimate purpose. This is what researchers Martin, Feldman, Hatch, & Sitkin refer to as the uniqueness paradox.

Read More…