Over twenty years ago, a Harvard Business School study measured the impact that a positive work culture had on organizational growth and performance. The results, after observing over two hundred organizations for twelve years, were sobering and dispelled any myth that culture was not a “hard” business issue. Read article by JIM LEE of Abilitree
Work cultures with well defined, living and integrated strategic visions, values, beliefs, norms, heroes, ongoing shared stories and systems that supported high performance significantly impacted the financial metrics that matter most to executives and their shareholders including but not limited to, revenue growth, employment growth, stock price growth and net income growth.
This study cited in Guiding Growth by Mark Lipton and his extensive longitudinal studies also included identical benefits for nonprofit organizations and the metrics important to them and their stakeholders.
SO HERE’S THE QUESTION
If having a positive and sustainable work culture is so important, why are the majority of companies today being driven by other standards and mechanisms? I have several theories and I bet you have some as well. Before we get into some of those “traffic warnings” and subsequent recommendations let’s talk a little bit about culture and how best to understand it.
First of all, your work culture is not just about your people but how their work is engaged and integrated with your strategic vision, values, human resource functions, all of your business initiatives, processes and structures. It’s a system that resists all attempts to segregate these items from the beautiful fabric that they were designed to cohabitate. It’s sort of like the human body.
We don’t understand it fully, but we know when it is working and when it is not. Even one important “part” or “passenger” ignored can lead to unexpected challenges and crises. Sort of like the Los Angeles “freeways” at rush hour that I navigated so many years: starts, stops, detours, time wasting delays, frustrations, accidents and unfortunately, even some casualties along the way.
But let’s take heart and not make rocket science out of baking brownies when it comes to evaluating the status of our work cultures. Take a simple and confidential survey of your staff and other sectors critical to your success and ask the following questions: How does it feel at the end of most days to work here or work with us? What brings you joy about your work or partnering with us? What do you believe are our biggest strengths and most needed areas for improvement? How can we make your particular job or work with our company easier and more productive?
It may sound too simple but it is where we need to start. Generally, one can spend an hour or two in a company as an outside visitor, talk to a few people or customers that are willing to be candid, most usually the line staff or middle management, and see whether or not the company is on course to arrive at their desired destination or in a number of traffic jams that seem to happen all too frequently.
So let’s assume you have some meaningful data. Where do you begin and how best do you engage your improvement initiatives? Is it more training for your staff? Do you reorganize around the same problems, offload some folks and hope for the best? Do you send more emails reminding all of your passengers about agreed upon values or most recently adopted policies and procedures? Do you write more policies and procedures or ask Human Resources to just “fix it” or perhaps better, hire a really good “motivational” speaker to get everyone on the same path?
I am afraid, at least in my forty years of experience, these types of strategies, although they can have some initial success, often leave leadership and most importantly your passengers frustrated and demoralized.
I would like to offer three reasons why most attempts at culture shifts fail or are relatively short lived and subsequent to these reasons, three recommendations that you might be able to bring on board this year to see if it improves your journey.
First, there is a widespread misunderstanding of the current science of human behavior.
We are still utilizing business practices that reflect Newtonian principles versus current thinking about how best to inspire our people and customer experiences. I am literally alarmed about how much longitudinal data there is out there on this subject but how little these new realities impact day to day functions in most companies. News flash, command and control systems no longer work and most of our companies are way over structured and under led. People are not machines and we can’t take them apart and put them back together again like we do our cars. You want a living breathing organization that is flexible, responsive, unleashes creativity, solves problems on the line where they happen (versus by a chosen few) and delights your customers.
RECOMMENDATION NUMBER ONE
Commit to a well-defined strategic vision and operational values that are integrated into every phase of your business systems and that drives your daily decision making. You need a facilitator for this, or better yet, an executive team that is fully bought into this critical process and has a full understanding about how much difference over time this can make to your bottom line. Keep your human resource functions right alongside your executive functions as cheerleaders and culture stewards for these initiatives and stop utilizing the HR function as a mere enforcement agency or “traffic cop.” In addition to Lipton’s book cited above I would also encourage you talk with someone about resources like Drive by Daniel Pink, Finding Our Way by Margaret Wheatley (for that matter anything by Margaret Wheatley) and an unbelievable resource by Dov Seidman by the simple title, How; Why How We Do Everything Means Everything.
Second, when resistance arrives during any engagement process it is more often looked at as an enemy vs. an ally.
Mark Lipton refers to this as the Binary Response or the pronounced human tendency to fall back on what is familiar and to avoid those behaviors and ways of thinking that are not part of our familiar repertoire. When we encounter a problem or challenge, we naturally fall back on our practiced approaches. It is fully understood that most CEOs and leadership teams may not have real experience or practice with these natural transitions that occur in any company so when the challenges hit, they avoid the problem all together and get back on a familiar road.
RECOMMENDATION NUMBER TWO
Get someone on your team that fully understands transition work and can be a guide during the natural resistance phases that are actually expected, needed and normal. A great resource book for this is Organizational Transitions by William Bridges.
Third, and related to number two there is a strong tendency to let immediate and short term problems be the driver of your journey and along with that and unwillingness to ask for help when it is needed.
When I talk to groups about leadership I usually ask them to give me their top five characteristics of quality leaders. I rarely get this one; vulnerability which I believe is an incredible strength of some of the best leaders I know. When more of us figure this out our people will drive our culture and our culture will be the consummate driver of both our profitability and sustainability.
I recently saw a couple of quotes that I would like to close with. Howard Zinn has said you can’t be neutral on a fast moving train. The Dali Lama when asked what should be our most important motivation that will inspire us to do great things shared, “critical thinking followed by meaningful action.”
It’s the power of one. You and I may not be able to make a world of difference but we can make a real difference in our world, one person, one company, one organization at a time. More leaders need to stand up and share this message and commitment to beliefs, values and new behaviors that are critically needed to re-energize capitalism in our country in the global economy we now have been in for some time. Or, we can continue to travel the same road in the crowded back seat and get the same results. It’s a choice that all of us have to make.
Jim Lee is the executive director of Abilitree, a local nonprofit and a Principal with InvitExcellence, a local coaching and consulting firm.
