Org Culture

Shifting Organizational Culture To Enable Collective Impact

By gothamCulture
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collective impact

By Chris Cancialosi & Stan Schneider

In 2011, the Foundation Strategy Group (FSG) released a seminal article by John Kania and Mark Kramer, which stimulated a much-needed resurgence of social reform initiatives that follow the collective impact paradigm. The concept of collective impact (CI) asserts that multiple, diverse agencies and groups must work together – not in their separate silos –to achieve the shared goal of effective and sustained social reforms – whether they are reforms aimed at children, disconnected youth, families, returning veterans, or other underserved groups.

What is the potential power of collective impact, and what internal cultural changes must occur before organizations can harness it?

In their paper, Kania and Kramer identified and defined five common components for organizations participating in successful social-change initiatives: a common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and the support of a “backbone” organization.

Understanding the fundamental components of collective impact efforts and actualizing and sustaining positive change as a result can be a significant gap to bridge for a variety of reasons.  A key element in driving this success is the ability for participating organizations to evolve their cultures (their normal way of getting things done) in order to develop a new way of collectively engaging that drives results.

Among the central tenets of collective impact that we address here are the notions that participating organizations (i.e., the “collective”) share a common reform agenda and are willing to engage in mutually reinforcing activities. For example, if a community is interested in improving student achievement, proponents of collective impact would argue that the school system should not tackle this issue on its own – it should collaborate with a wide range of other public, philanthropic and community organizations who share a common interest in public education.

An often-cited exemplar of collective impact in action is the United Way-sponsored Strive Network, begun in Cincinnati, Ohio, and in northern Kentucky. The Strive Network has brought together a diverse set of community leaders to develop cradle-to-career supports for young people, resulting in promising gains in academic achievement and system-wide improvements in education.

Challenges In Bringing Collective Impact to Fruition

While collaborative engagement can be a significant contributor to social reform, we have learned, from our experience in collective impact initiatives, that it is often easier said than done for organizations to truly align themselves around shared goals – especially when these organizations have a history of competing against each other for funding, and, in some cases, for populations to serve.

To illustrate the point, the school choice movement has fueled unprecedented competition for students between and among public, charter, and private schools. If a city’s public, charter, and private school administrators were to participate in a collective impact initiative intended to improve citywide education outcomes, would they be able to subordinate their own institutional agendas (for expanding enrollments, for higher-performing or better-behaved pupils, etc.) in favor of what might prove to be in the best interests of the community’s students and families?

Similarly, could publicly operated child welfare agencies collaborate with private foster care agencies without bias in a public-private collective designed to systematize foster care referrals in the best interests of the children requiring placements? Perhaps, but doing so might require a substantial organizational culture change for some of the groups involved – and changing an organization’s culture can be a daunting challenge.

Collective Impact and Organizational Culture

collective impactImplementing the kind of cultural change that may be required by organizations participating in (or asked to participate in) a collective impact initiative would necessitate a carefully planned and well-executed change management process. Such a process would require participating organizations to engage in new ways of approaching and interacting in their work in order to create new, mutually agreed upon ways of collaborating to drive the potential collective results that this model can provide.

In order for the five foundational components of CI to truly add value in terms of tangible and sustainable collective gains, each member of the collective must adapt the way they “do business” in potentially fundamental ways that can grind against the existing beliefs and assumptions people have used as a guide for their work for a long time. Helping people to understand the changes, and reinforcing the idea that ways of working up until this point were not incorrect, can be beneficial in reducing the anxiety that people may be feeling when confronted with these transitions.

If organizational culture is defined as the shared beliefs and norms of behavior that an organization develops over time, it would not be surprising that, oftentimes, “right” might look different from group to group. The “right” behaviors that are adopted over time can look different from organization to organization primarily due to the fact that they each found their path to success through different means.

So long as this way of working yields success for the collective, it only serves to reinforce that those ways of working are, in fact, the right ways to do things. It is this basic tenet of culture that makes it so solid and difficult to evolve. If, through engaging in CI efforts, leaders are asking their people to behave in ways that misalign with the historically “right” way of doing things, a significant amount of anxiety can develop and resistance to such changes may well derail any hopes of achieving the benefits of such an effort.

“Are you telling me the way we’ve always done it is wrong?” “I know how to succeed in this current environment- I may not be as successful doing things a new way?” “If this worked so well for so long, why would we even think about changing the recipe?”

In order to effectively prepare their organizations to evolve existing systems and processes to fully reap the rewards that CI can offer, leaders must first set the conditions that will help their people challenge and adapt their thinking around these dramatic new ways of operating. Below are several critical considerations for leaders contemplating utilizing CI as a way of bringing about significant and sustainable reform.

Prepare Yourself.

  • Examine your own beliefs, values and assumptions as a leader and try to gain an understanding of those with whom you may partner.  Misalignment of fundamental beliefs about how things get done can be an enormous hurdle to try to work through, taking focus and effort away from your CI efforts.
  • Come to grips with the fact that you may have to give up power for the greater good of the collective and be sure that you are okay with that prior to getting into a situation. When this happens it can undermine the benefit of the CI effort before it even has a chance to get off the ground.

Prepare Your Team.

  • Take the time, as a team, to really understand the culture of your organization. What is truly valued? What unique philosophies about the work you do are fundamental to your organization’s identity? Having a clear understanding of your culture will help you understand the potential implications of attempting to partner with other organizations in a CI effort.
  • Work with your team to discuss and come to grips with the possibility that by giving things up to the collective, the organization may in fact have a lot to gain. This may include giving up total control of how things are done, giving up data and information that was once held close to the vest, or relinquishing certain aspects of peoples’ roles in order to maximize the impact of the collective.

Prepare the Collective.

  • Before diving into the work at hand, advocate that time and attention must be allocated to the formation of the new collective. Engage as many stakeholders as possible in discussions about the big picture, roles and responsibilities, and allow people to work through questions and concerns together.
  • Help stakeholders at all levels to understand how their day-to-day efforts and new work methods are going to add value to the collective. Having a clear understanding of where you fit in can make a huge difference in peoples’ experiences with the new normal.
  • Don’t make it a one-hit wonder. Set aside time along the way to continue to give people a chance to come together, to share lessons learned, and to take an active role in continuing to work through challenges that are affecting the collective.
  • Collaborate early, at all levels, in identifying the systems and processes that will help smooth out interactions.  Figure out how data will be shared in a way that makes all parties comfortable as trust develops.

As the collective impact model continues to gain momentum, and as valuable lessons are learned with regard to best practices for setting a solid foundation for success in such efforts, we submit that larger, cultural assessment and evolution be a key foundational component in this process. The cultural shift that would enable participating organizations to step out of their traditional silos to support the collective agenda seems a necessary condition for achieving the desired social impact, and is worthy of systematic attention from proponents of the collective impact movement.

This article was co-written by Stan Schneider, President and CEO of Metis Associates, Inc., a national, employee-owned consulting firm that brings over 36 years of experience in evaluation, information technology, and grant development to its work with a wide range of organizations committed to making a meaningful difference in the lives of children, families, and communities.

4 Leadership Lessons From History’s Most Successful Coaches

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
leadership lessons from successful coaches

Not only do sports imitate life, but sports also imitate business. CEOs and managers at all levels can learn a trick or two from the most distinguished sports coaches in history, incorporating both the technical and management sides of being a successful leader.

Here are four timeless coaching philosophies that can be adopted by today’s leaders to get the most out of their employees.

“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming” – John Wooden

John Wooden was a basketball coach who won ten NCAA national championships at UCLA during the 1960s-1970s. He was named national Coach of the Year six times and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame both as a player and a coach.

Rather than using the usual metric of wins and loses, Wooden looked for a better way to define success for his team. His personal definition of success thus became encouraging his players to do the best that they were capable of. As long as his players pushed themselves to do their best, the score became the byproduct of all their hard work and training.

Great leaders train their employees well, giving them every tool they need to succeed in their jobs. There are always forces outside a person’s control that may lead to a disappointing outcome. However, as long as that person does the best that he or she is capable of, the foundation to create eventual success is firmly in place.

“Competing at the highest level is not about winning. It’s about preparation, courage, understanding and nurturing your people and heart. Winning is the result.” – Joe Torre

Both a former player and manager, Joe Torre’s most successful run was as the coach of the New York Yankees from 1996-2007. Under his leadership, the Yankees won the World Series four times. Torre was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014.

Torre’s keys to leadership success were knowing each of his players as individuals and taking the time to listen to each of them. He talked individually with his players to clarify expectations, build confidence, answer questions, and offer support. He also treated them with honesty and encouraged their trust. It was understood that if players didn’t trust Torre, or any manager, they would never listen to him and wouldn’t strive to live up to his expectations.

Every player was told that there would come a time in the season when he would be put in a significant situation to help the team realize its goals. Torre made all his players feel valued; a part of something bigger than themselves.

A great leader knows each of his or her employees’ strengths and takes the time to get to know each of them on an individual level. This builds a relationship of trust and transparency, which can lead to improved levels of productivity, organizational citizenship behaviors, and workplace well-being. No one employee is responsible for the success of a team. Each worker will need to step up to the plate during a critical moment in time to bring home a win.

“It isn’t about the words you say. It’s about the energetic message you send.” – Pete Carroll

Pete Carroll is the current head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, and is one of only three football coaches to have won both a Super Bowl and a college football National Championship.

Influenced both by John Wooden’s principal of carrying a strong, clear message and the Grateful Dead’s desire to do something that no one else could do, Carroll realized that his coaching philosophy was going to have to be strong and clear so that each of his players knew what was expected of them. He emphasizes focus, clarity, and belief in oneself as the elements that allow someone to play freely. Carroll plans surprises and pranks to lighten his team’s mood, and he rewards players for their hard work. Juxtaposed to this, he also has strictly prescribed routines that cover what players eat, what vocabulary they use, and the themes of daily practices.

Great leaders have clearly articulated expectations and goals so employees know what is expected of them. This clarity allows employees to work towards an idea with the greatest level of dogged commitment and efficiency. As important as the precision of the goal is, it is equally vital to not let it become monotonous to obtain. Rewards and levity should be interjected into the workplace to improve morale and encourage continued hard work.

“The strength of the team is each individual member… the strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson

Phil Jackson was a basketball coach who won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls and five championships with the Los Angeles Lakers. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.

Jackson used a holistic approach to coaching that was influenced by Eastern philosophy and mindfulness, leading to his nickname of “Zen Master”. His strengths were in his ability to create a strong team culture by developing leadership, empowerment, communication, trust, and motivation. Jackson’s use of the triangle offense demonstrated his thoughts about how a team should work together, with no one person being put above the others. Additionally, Jackson believed in being authentic and true to who you are, letting what was important to him drive practices infused with a positive spirit.

Great leaders are only as strong as the team they lead, so creating a healthy and empowered team culture leads to positive outcomes. Every member is equally valued and the ability to work together is an important quality for each individual to possess. It’s easy to let activities become mundane, so having a positive attitude and spontaneous spirit can help end the routine of a day. Above all else, leaders should lead authentically, showing their employees who they truly are and what they value.

Each of these coaches was irrefutably successfuland each used a different coaching philosophy to get to there. But, within each of these unique styles, there is one key message from sports to business: leading based on what you believe in and valuing how your team can work together to succeed will lead to a prosperous and healthy workplace culture.

New Employee Onboarding: Lessons From Philmont Scout Ranch

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
new employee onboarding

The onboarding process is one of the most important experiences your new employees will have at your company. It’s a way for you to welcome them with open arms as a valued new member of your organization’s culture.

If done well, your new hires will feel important, supported and immediately motivated to do their best work for you and your organization. When left as an afterthought, however, new employees may end up feeling undervalued, unsupported or even ostracized from the rest of your team.

Like many companies, gothamCulture aspires to be better at the way we bring new members onto our team.  We are constantly refining our onboarding process to make team members feel welcomed by the team and get them the information and resources they need to quickly ramp up.

Surprisingly, one of the best experiences I’ve had recently around onboarding came from a backpacking trip with my son. While you may not think the two are related, there are some critical lessons to take away from this recent experience.

Onboarding, Culture and Philmont Scout Ranch

Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, NM, is the oldest Boy Scouts of America (BSA) high adventure camp. It sits on over 130,000 acres of New Mexican wilderness. They have welcomed over 1 million ‘customers’ to date, including 22,000 scouts and advisors over this summer alone. They have over 1,000 employees to help make this an adventure of a lifetime for many of those scouts.

With so many new visitors travelling their backcountry, Philmont must have an effective, consistent, onboarding process in place. It is this process that has kept Philmont and its culture as an enduring legacy since 1939.

Here is how it works:

 Arrival

Like any new team member, you are excited to be on board but aren’t quite sure what you are supposed to be doing. In most cases, you have come by plane and then bus to get dropped off at the welcome station. There, a staff member welcomes you and asks your crew to form a pack line (just line up your backpacks against one another on the designated post).

You are then introduced to your Ranger (in our case Ben), who will be your mentor at Philmont and accompany you for the first two days in the backcountry.  They give you some basic orientation, answer any immediate questions and arrange to meet you at the mess hall for dinner.  After you get your gear all put away at the tent city, there is some downtime for scouts to visit the trading post to buy ice cream and soda.

Takeaways:  Constant communication is key for new employees. On their first day, they need some direction as to what they’re supposed to do. But, don’t overwhelm them with a constant barrage of orientation. Allow some downtime for them to digest information and informally get to know the rest of your team.

The Day Before Heading Out

The morning before heading out, you’ll meet your Ranger at the mess hall for breakfast. Afterwards, they take you on a tour of basecamp and get the required stops out of the way: logistics/registration, medical pre-check, equipment and initial food pickup, and facilities like the post office and lockers.

After lunch, they meet you at your tent cabins and pull absolutely everything out of your packs to show you what you need and what may have been unnecessary to bring. Though they might have the best of intentions, for example, scouts generally don’t need to carry 5 lbs. of m&m’s in their backpack for the next several days.

The night is capped off with a welcome campfire program, where they introduce you to the history of northern New Mexico, Philmont and the scouting legacy. The evening ends like every campfire program; the Philmont hymn, which, like the Philmont prayer before meals, is another reinforcement of the Philmont culture.

Takeaways:  Onboarding requires a few different things in order to succeed. You need to educate your new team members on the policies and procedures of your organization. But, in order to instill a sense of belonging, you should also fill them in on some of the company lore that exists below the surface. Stories are a great way to communicate your culture—from the history to current traditions—they can help make your new hires feel as if they’re part of something bigger than themselves.

On the Trail

At your first camp, your Ranger introduces you to the ‘bearmuda triangle’:  the red roofed outhouse, a sump for dumping smellable liquid waste and the bear cable. You don’t camp inside the triangle and usually try to set up your tents in previous tent spots to minimize impact. Your Ranger then shows you how to hang your bear bags and takes you through the first meal. Lessons include how to sterilize cookware, prepare your meal, and cleanup before getting the crew down for the night.

The next morning, you pack up, make a wonderful breakfast of snack bars, pop tarts and/or instant oatmeal. Meals may seem like a brainless routine, but during this time, our Ranger was constantly showing the boys how to follow ‘leave no trace’ and, in the case of the bear bags, reinforcing the idea behind them as protecting the bears. New Mexico policy is to tag a nuisance bear twice and then kill it, so the point is that the scouts know they are helping to possibly save a bear when they follow these rules.

Finally, each night they do ‘roses, thorns and buds’ – this is a chance for every scout and advisor to tell the crew what they liked about that day, what they didn’t like and what they are looking forward to the next day.

Takeaways:  Hands-on mentoring with a combination of demonstration and delegation helps each team member learn to follow the processes and execute them competently. Regular check-ins are a chance for the team to build camaraderie while making sure your new team members are engaged in the process. From beginning to end, constant communication is key to success.

The Rest of the Journey

On the last night together, your Ranger hands out wilderness cards to each scout and asks them to think long and hard before signing them and committing to protecting the wilderness (they also, at their discretion, share a Sara Lee pound cake and tub of icing that they have been hauling along, depending on how good of a crew you have been).  The next morning your Ranger is gone and the crew is on its own. In our case, we were on our trek for another nine days, hiking for over 75 miles and seeing some of the most beautiful backcountry there is. We stayed at trail camps and staff camps and got to enjoy some great campfire programs. We had our ups and downs as only a group of thirteen and fourteen year-old boys can, though we didn’t descend quite to the level of Lord of the Flies and managed to bring everyone back without any major injuries.

Takeaways: While mentoring and constant check-ins are important to ramp up your employees, empowerment is truly tested when they are on their own. At the end of the process, your team should be ready and able to carry on the behaviors and values that make up your company culture.

Lessons Learned

I have never met someone who went to Philmont and not described it as one of the best and most memorable experiences of their lives. I did not have the chance to go when I was in scouting and took this as an opportunity to bond with my son (and maybe show a fourteen year old that I am not as old as he thinks…). I hope that in future years he will look back and remember the experience fondly as well.

From an onboarding perspective, I have to admire the way the Philmont takes in hundreds of scouts on a daily basis, plugs them into the program and gets them on their way into the backcountry, all while instilling them with the idea that they are doing something awesome. Scouts know they have a responsibility to their teammates, and to Philmont, to dig deep and be the best team member that they can be.

How are you instilling these kinds of values into your onboarding process?

Build A Culture of Trust: Sharing Financials With Your Team

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , ,
sharing financials with your team

The open sharing of company financials can still be a touchy subject for many leaders. For years, it was generally accepted that a company should have closed books. No one questioned a company’s success if they were able to please investors, and employees certainly did not need to have access to closed door financial forecasting and investor reports.

Today, we are beginning to think about these things differently. With companies like Buffer leading the way to total financial transparency, it’s becoming clear that corporate success is measured differently today than it was 10 years ago. Organizations are not only expected to please their investors, but their other stakeholders as well.

Things like transparency, openness, and active engagement are not only highly valued, but expected. We now question the motives behind the levels of secrecy that were once widely accepted as the way it’s always been done.

Still, many privately held companies today do not, and have no intention of, sharing their financials or other closely held information in any form with their staff.

My question to the leaders of these organizations is: why?

Three Arguments Against Financial Transparency (and why they’re wrong)

Over the years, I’ve heard many leaders try and explain why they are not opening up their books to their employees. Here are a few:

“Our People Wouldn’t Understand.”

This may be true, at least at first.  Many employees out there (and some business leaders too!) are not adept at understanding simple company performance metrics, mostly because they’ve never been afforded the opportunity to see them and learn.  Sharing financial information gives your employees the opportunity to develop their business acumen.

By learning how to read and interpret financial information related to the company, they will develop their professional repertoire while developing a deeper understanding and appreciation of how their day-to-day actions impact the bigger picture. By cascading financial discussions throughout the organization, you give your people the information they need to take ownership in activities such as budgeting and expenditure control.

Mark Emerson, our General Manager at gothamCulture, has experienced the benefits firsthand. “I have had a number of colleagues throughout the years thank me for teaching them how to make sense of a P&L, balance sheet and cash flow statement. These skills actually carry over for them into all aspects of their work, from projects to product launches.”

“I have also seen that it makes conversations about difficult company decisions easier. Without a financial presentation to show a significant change in revenues, for example, and how the company decision helps adapt to those changes across the organization, employees may find it difficult to embrace those kinds of actions.”

“Our People Wouldn’t Care.”

Let me ask you this: Do your employees care how much they’re getting paid?  Do your employees care whether or not they’ll have a job in six months? Showing them how every dollar is allocated helps employees understand the real context in which the organization is operating and how they can individually contribute to the organization’s success.

Without knowing how much money the company is making and how it’s being managed, the only thing they know is how much they are making in relation to your last big sale, or the last public revenue announcement. In this context, it’s easy for your employees to feel undervalued.

The best way to combat this is to make your financial information openly available to them.

“Sharing Information Means We Lose Power.”

While it may seem counterintuitive at first, sharing financial information openly and honestly with your employees actually helps you gain power. An open and honest dialogue around financials creates increased transparency and helps build trust.

Rather than viewing this sharing of information as losing power, I’ve found that employees who understand the financial performance of their companies tend to begin to take much more ownership of their day-to-day behaviors and decisions.  Rather than losing power, these organizations become more powerful.

The fact is, your employees will likely find out about the information anyway. Whether through gossip, social media, or through sites like Glassdoor, who recently found that 98% of job seekers say it’s important to work for a company that embraces transparency. You may as well openly share it with them first, before they hear it secondhand.

Building A Culture Of Trust

Whether your organization shares financial information with all staff or not, and to what level of detail you share information, is your decision. Know, however, that what you do sends clear messages to the people in your company about what you think of them.

If your end goal is increased engagement, better customer service, and higher performance, you have to start by empowering your people with the information and tools they need to succeed. If you want your employees to trust you, show them that you can be trusted. And when it comes to financials, the messages you send by hiding information are likely not doing you any favors.

Change Begins Where Strategy, Culture And Leadership Connect

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , , ,
culture and leadership change

Many organizations know when they are in need of change. Things that once worked don’t seem work any longer across the organization. Small issues in one area or function or department now seem systemic. Behaviors and attitudes about work, and with work, are changing. Austerity, ambiguity and productivity issues may be permeating.

Organizations recognize when there is a need for change, even if they don’t fully understand what needs changing or where to start in order to address these issues. Often, leaders address performance or engagement opportunities at the surface level, when in reality these may be indicators of a much deeper problem that can only be identified by addressing the organization’s strategy, culture and leadership.

In these cases, leaders must address all of these facets of the organization rather than focusing on a single issue. And while there is no universal resolution for every organization, I’ve found that addressing these performance issues effectively always begins with the following 3 steps.

Step 1: Acknowledge the Problem

So you know you need change. Check.

Then, as any good leader would do, you immediately jump to what you believe should be step 2:  solve the problem. You start attempting to change everything all at once. But, while you’re testing new changes, overwhelming your staff with new roles and responsibilities and asking a litany of perhaps unplanned, random, unconnected and overlapping questions, you may be watching your ‘systemic’ issues persist or even get worse.

You ask yourself, “Where do I go from here?”

Where you go is really a question of where you start. It’s important to realize that step 2 is not to solve the problem, because you haven’t yet addressed the cause of the problem. Step 2 is about truly assessing the problems, the situation and the current reality of what is going on in your organization.

Step 2: Assessment

Before you can begin to find effective solutions, you must first accurately and reliably assess the problem you’re trying to solve. Assessment of key variables, regardless of where you company is in size or maturity, is key. This is often a difficult concept for us ardent, type-a leaders who want to see results and see them now.

Patience, we will get you there. But first, let’s assess the situation correctly and thoroughly before we spend resources on solutions that may not be the root-cause of your issues.

There are a few consistent key areas of assessment any organization should start from when embarking on a journey of organizational change. Taking the time to accurately assess the reality of your organization’s issues will help you better identify the root cause and allow you to understand how to best prioritize your approach to the change at hand.

The key assessment areas fall within four key areas: 

The first two assessment areas help you understand the reality of your ROI (return on investment) or value:

  • Mission (direction, purpose and blueprint) “Do we know where we are going as an organization?”
  • Consistency (systems, structure & processes) “Do our systems create leverage?”

The second two assessment areas help you understand innovation and customer satisfaction:

  • Adaptability (pattern, trends, market) “Are we listening to the market / our customers?”
  • Involvement (commitment, ownership, responsibility) “Are our people aligned and engaged?”

Once the assessment in these four areas is completed, you now have an understanding of your current operating environment. Now you can begin to prioritize the problems you’ve uncovered, and how you need to address them.

Step 3: Solution Strategies

The most critical solution strategies you put in place will likely require some level of initial action in one or more of the areas of strategy, leadership, and/or culture change. These three areas encompass the triad of successful organizational change attributes.

As I mentioned before, you cannot try to solve everything all at once without overwhelming your team. In order to prioritize these three change navigation attributes, then, you want to choose one of these three as your area of focus:

  • A Strategy focus starts the change journey by first understanding your direction, purpose and blueprint and how these impact organizational success.
  • A Leadership focus starts the change journey by first understanding who you are as leaders in your organization. Consider how you show up collectively as a team and individually as an executive and how this impacts organizational success.
  • A Culture focus starts by first understanding the underlying organizational behaviors, values and assumptions that exist and how these impacts organizational success.

You should start with at least one of these change navigation attributes, but wherever you start, you will realistically tap into all three at some point on your journey to high performance and organizational improvement.

Strategy, culture and leadership all go hand in hand. Your organization will only find sustainable success at the intersection of all three.

Two Ways To Ensure Your Corporate Culture And Values Align

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
corporate culture and values

When you think of your company’s values, what comes to mind?

Do they serve as a compass for your organization? A manifesto? Do they hold any weight at all?

In the organizational development field, and particularly in my work in organizational culture, the importance of a solid set of values in your company cannot be overstated. Unfortunately, many leaders today still struggle to create meaningful values in their organizations despite their best efforts.

Rather than actionable corporate values statements that encompass the overall strategy and culture of an organization, leaders often lean on single, powerful words or phrases. Examples of this might be “Innovation, Community, and Service.”

They look good. They sound good. But they are all but meaningless without the behaviors to back them up.

Ideally, value statements explicitly define how people will behave with each other and customers in your organization. When values statements succeed, the daily behaviors of your people will embody the core values you set forth. When they fall flat, as Patrick M. Lencioni wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “Empty values statements create cynical and dispirited employees, alienate customers, and undermine managerial credibility.”

When your culture and values don’t align, your employees, customers and profitability may suffer.

So, how do you create values statements that will help align your employees and organizational culture in order to drive performance?

Creating More Meaningful Values Statements

I recently read a fascinating article by my colleague Levi Nieminen, Director of Research and Development at Denison Consulting. In it, he outlines two exercises business leaders can do to pressure test their organizational values and ensure they aren’t “bland, toothless, or just plain dishonest.”

Here is what he offers:

1. Avoid the “Feel-Goods.” This is based on the idea that values cannot be battle-tested by success. Rather, companies should think about their values in relation to difficult situations they’ve faced.

“Recall the three most challenging situations your organization [or team, etc.] has faced in the last few years and what the organization did in response to these situations. Now answer the following question: Do the values help to make sense of what was done and why?”

If the honest answer is no, it may be time to reexamine what’s really valued in your organization. By trying to develop a set of values that can be used as a framework to guide decision-making, leaders can help their teams understand why decisions are being made.

2. Look at the “Illogical” Side. Many organizations today are moving away from values-based decision-making in favor of big data and analytics. But, in the absence of hard data we have to fall back on something to serve as our guide for action.

When data isn’t present, or we don’t have all the facts, we have no choice but the fall back on our values.

“Recall the last three times when your organization [or team] made a decision ‘shooting from the hip,’ that is, when you didn’t have the intel that you wanted. In each case, describe the decision that was made and how the decision was reached. Now answer the following question: Do the values help you to explain or justify what was decided and why?”

There is a lot of value in quantitative data analysis and the information it provides, but data is becoming increasing more accessible to people as time goes on. Meaning, you and all your competitors will likely have access to identical data to inform your decisions.

When that playing field of available information is level, the “illogical,” human-side of your decisions will ultimately be what sets you apart from the competition.

Values With Teeth

Values are meant to be more than a poster on the wall.

In order to create values statements that succeed, you must start thinking critically about how they will inform your culture and the decisions that are made on a daily basis. Consider how the policies you have in place will help support them, and ensure your leadership team is both communicating and exemplifying your values to your team.

Don’t expect employees to rally around a set of hollow values when those ideas aren’t practiced and upheld by the leaders in your organization. Your organization will be better for considering these exercises, and determining whether or not your values really have any teeth.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Five Ways to Foster Commitment During Organizational Change

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , , ,
foster commitment during organizational change

You’ve already met for countless hours with consultants, your leadership teams, and analysts to plan a change for your organization. You have a well thought-out direction and plenty of steps to get there.

You’re ready…

Chomping at the bit…

…Now what?

You’ve worked hard to map out the path ahead. But to move towards that new direction, you need commitment from the rest of the organization. You need people on your side, willing to change along with you. A critical mass of committed people to get the other heel-draggers to come along.

If you’re imagining a tall, rocky cliff in front of you when it comes to this part of the change, you’re not alone. Fostering commitment takes time, presence, and awareness. It may be an uphill climb, but with the right tools and mindset, you can lead the way for the rest of your team to commit and follow you up the mountain.

Leaders often take systems, like the chain of command, compensation, or the social pressures from colleagues, for granted. Rather than spending the time to foster genuine commitment, they rely on extrinsic incentives and compliance to ensure that change happens. Unfortunately, forcing commitment through compliance is often unsustainable.

While compliance may work for small process changes, it only encourages the bare minimum for organizational change. In the long run, forcing compliance can contribute to a pervasive feeling of disempowerment among employees.

There’s no doubt that changing behavior is hard for everyone. The psychological process of change can be a gauntlet. It’s up to you as a leader in your organization to help your team understand their role in the change process and help give them a sense of ownership over the outcome.

Here are 5 ways you can help foster commitment in times of organizational change:

Understand and recognize what has to be let go

In order to change, we have to let go of what was done before. Psychologists know this as a very real period of loss, anxiety, and fear. During the change process, there will be a range of reactions from people, both inwardly and (sometimes) directed at you: “So you mean what I was doing before was wrong?” “But I’m comfortable here.” “This is the way we’ve always done it.” “What am I going to lose?” “What do I need to protect?” You can imagine how this anxiety can spiral into resistance.

As a leader, rather than glossing over this fear, address it. Be frank about what might be different. Recognize those feelings of worry, and help people deal with it by listening rather than rushing to convince them of the positive outcomes that will result from a change. People need to be heard in order to feel supported during this time.

Tap into your authentic self

Be honest with yourself and your team about the level of discomfort there may be with the change. Will you be struggling to adopt some of these things? An authentic display of self-awareness and vulnerability does a lot to develop trust between you and your employees: “I know my default setting is to keep information to myself, especially given how hierarchical we’ve been in the past. But I’m actively working on getting information out to more people as we transition. It feels unnatural to me, but I’m convinced this will be good for us in the long-term.”

You can also recall your own experiences with change to empathize with your organization. Do the following reflection: When was the last time you were asked to do something dramatically different? What was your initial reaction to that request? How did you feel? What did you do? Did you change? Why? Pay attention to what it was like for you to change, and connect with people on this level.

Get to know your community

Development workers, social workers, and community organizers are in the business of asking people to make big changes. A major part of their work is to get to know the community, simply by walking around and spending time with people. Take a page from their book: get out from behind your desk and into the organization and actually talk to people.

During a change, your presence as a leader is critical. Listen. Ask good questions. Allow members of your organization to discuss what they see and how they see it. Take the time to respond to those fears and worries about the coming changes.

There is nothing worse for commitment than an absent leader. Feeling seen and heard can lessen people’s level of emotional vulnerability during change. Get out there and be your honest self.

Get the right people on board

Consider doing a network mapping exercise to understand who in your organization will be most important to get committed early. Who has a strong relationship with people? Who knows how to develop trust with their subordinates? If one person commits, will there be ten others who follow them?

As people in your organization enter into the change-gauntlet, they will be looking to the top for confirmation. Is your leadership team walking the talk? Are they committed in a way that role-models behavior to the rest of your employees? The same questions mentioned above will be crucial to have with your top team.

Rinse and repeat

Gaining commitment is an iterative process and different people will experience anxiety at different times. As your plan gets underway, new questions will arise. Your leadership team may feel exhausted.

What’s important to remember is that re-visiting commitment is equally as important as re-hashing the plan and tracking your progress. The 5 tips above will help you get there.

Values with Teeth: Create More Meaningful Values Statements

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , ,
create value statements with teeth

Guest article written by Levi Nieminen, Ph.D.

A number of years back, Patrick Lencioni wrote, “Make your values mean something.” His Harvard Business Review article (HBR) is a must-read for any executives toying with the idea of creating values statements in their companies, particularly those who may be doing so lightly.

For those of you who have charged past Lencioni’s warnings and, for good reason, are searching for the best ways to get it right, this brief article builds on that discussion to describe two tests that can help you to avoid creating a values set that is “bland, toothless, or just plain dishonest.”

Read More…

How to Boost Performance Through Thoughtful Workplace Design

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,

Does workplace design boost performance, or is it another passing trend for companies who are grasping at straws in their ongoing quest to be “cool”, innovative or enticing in their efforts for attracting top talent?

First, let me be clear: I’m not an expert in the design of physical workspaces. But, having had the privilege to consult for many different organizations over the years, I have seen firsthand the impact that physical work environment can have on attitude and behavior.

This experience has given me a deep appreciation of the ways office design can reinforce the underlying beliefs, assumptions and values that are held to be true in organizations. As an organizational psychologist who specializes in organizational culture, I understand that physical work environment can play a critical role in reinforcing what is and isn’t valued in the company- a physical manifestation of what people hold to be true about how work should get done.

For example, as a medical company, you should be utilising a company such as iMedical to effectively design and build your space. Their floor planning service is tailor made for medical companies – and this can improve employee retention, happiness and productivity.

Similar to other physical manifestations of culture, like the way people dress or the formality of their interactions, physical environment can serve to clearly reinforce what “successful” or “desired” behavior looks like. But, it takes more than exposed brick or a new foosball table to make it happen in a sustainable way.

How Workplace Design Can Help (Or Hinder) Performance

There are two trends I see in organizations trying to change their culture (and behavior) by changing their workspace: The group that thinks that offering craft beer in the breakroom will make people behave in more innovative ways, and those organizations that use changes in the physical workspace as one lever in an intentional change effort that supports and reinforces changes in all other areas of the business.

Organizations in the former category attempt to find a silver bullet through superficial changes in the hopes that it will spur new, desired behaviors. Unfortunately, they usually find their efforts falling short as the other aspects of their culture pull people to maintain the status quo.

Conversely, companies that take a more multifaceted approach to evolving behaviors by shaping and aligning the physical environment in addition to their existing systems and processes seem better able to affect sustainable behavior change.

So, what makes the difference?

The norms of behavior that develop in an organization do so over time.  They are continually reinforced at every turn from the way people are compensated to the way meetings occur and everything in between. To assume that changing one thing (like the physical environment) is enough to sway people’s behavior in the midst of so many other aspects of culture influencing their behaviors seems aspirational at best. Even by keeping the work-space at a nice working temperature during the winter months would keep motivation up an would increase productivity. If you operating within a large premises you should look at Go Home heating HVAC repair to make sure your A/C has been serviced to ensure it last throughout the winter months.

Today’s leaders must be thoughtful about the way in which their office design supports the culture they want to create, and the behaviors they want to reinforce.

My smart colleague, Maya Razon, an organizational development consultant in the Bay Area, has been researching thought leaders in the space of physical office design. Recently, I was able to catch up with her to discuss some of her key learnings about how organizations can truly drive performance through thoughtful workplace design.  Here’s what she had to say-

3 Ways to Drive Performance Through Workplace Design

1. Bring Nature Indoors. Have you heard of the biophilia hypothesis? It literally means “love of life or living systems.” It’s the idea that there is an intrinsic bond between humans and other living things, like plants.

The theory was popularized in 1984, but recent research has found a more scientific link between productivity and the presence of nature. In fact, researchers from the Rocky Mountain Institute and Carnegie Mellon University have reported significant improvements in productivity as a result of green building features, including day lighting and views to the outdoors.

You can easily incorporate this theory into the workplace by simply adding plants and greenery around your offices. Environmental psychologist Sally Augustin, PhD suggests providing views of nature if at all possible. rolling hills and gently flowing water are best. Too much vegetation (views that feel jungle-like or water rapids) can have the opposite effect of adding stress vs. decreasing it.

2. Give Your Employees Control. Humans desire control over their environment, so consider giving your employees more control over how their individual workplace looks and feels. Even little things, like getting to pick their computer desk or having a desk lamp, which an employee can turn on and off, or ways to change the office temperature with fans or heaters can make a big difference.

Dr. Stefano Schiavon, Assistant Professor of Architecture at UC Berkeley says, “Managers should provide the opportunity for control. If we allow employees to control their time and tasks, they are more productive. And if we do the same for their thermal conditions with openable windows, personal temperature control, access to outside, and energy efficient personal heaters and fans, they will be happier.”

3. Know who you are and what you are trying to accomplish. The approach to office space design today is varied, from assigned cubicles, flexing work spaces and the open-office trend. If you study successful workplace design in companies like Google or Pixar, you’ll find a variety of fresh approaches within their walls, all of them supporting the values and behaviors they want to encourage.

Franklin Becker, Professor Emeritus of Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell University cautions about how easy it is to get caught up in rhetoric about workspaces. Before jumping in to make changes to your office environment it’s helpful to ask “What is my organization and culture about? What really counts if we have to make choices about space and where can we make choices that have the best ROI?”

Design With Purpose

Look, I’m a fan of foosball and ping-pong as much as the next guy. But if I’m going to put a table in our office I want to know that my company and our people are going to get something meaningful out of it.

As leaders in our organizations, we have a responsibility to think more critically and holistically about the design decisions we make. We must be aware of how these external motivators are meant to influence our organizational culture and values – or if they do at all.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

How to Prepare For Successful Organizational Culture Change

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , ,
prepare for successful organizational culture change

While most of your employees likely understand that their primary responsibility at work is — well — to work, I’m going out on a limb here and guessing that they don’t want to be treated like mindless drones in the process.

In today’s hyper-connected world, employees are making their voices heard: They want to join organizations that stand for something. They want to align themselves with a corporate culture that fits their own beliefs and values. A place where they can bring their best selves and contribute in ways that make a difference.

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