Consulting: Targeted projects to strengthen your culture and improve performance.
Speaking: Keynotes and concurrent sessions on social business, conflict, and generations.
Writing: Two books (Humanize and Generational Diversity) and an industry-recognized leadership blog (see below).
This is not a rhetorical question–I am openly wondering about this topic these days. I’m reading Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, advocates for the “Results Only Work Environment.” They talk a lot about how deeply ingrained our thoughts are regarding time in the workplace. It all stems from the industrial era–putting in your time at your machine. More time at the machine meant more productivity. It was pretty simple. But they (and I) argue that most jobs don’t operate that way any more. Productivity is not simply a factor of time at your desk any more, yet so many workplaces and bosses treat it that way.
But I have seen both bosses and employees have clear conversations with each other about the fact that it’s the results that matter, not the amount of time you put in. They seem to come to a solid agreement on this. No ambiguity. It’s not about the hours, no sir. And the next day one or both of them will make a comment about how someone left early or came in late and isn’t pulling their weight. This perplexes me. The logic is not enough to actually sway the underlying belief.
That’s why I thought it might be generational. When something hits on values you set when you were coming of age, logic is often no match. But again, I don’t have conclusive research here–I’m looking for your thoughts on this. I’m wondering if this focus on hours and time in the office is a Baby Boomer thing. Maybe it’s connected to that ethos of the 60s of showing up, marching, sitting in, showing your commitment. There was no flex time during a march. You couldn’t telecommute to a sit-in. The Boomers proved that if you worked hard enough you could change the world, but hard work was predicated on showing up. In person.
What do you think?
I had the great pleasure of doing a webinar recently with Brad Palmer, the CEO of Jostle. We were talking about shifting your organizational culture from toxic to Humanized. For that webinar, I wrote up a definition of organizational culture, which is something I hadn’t done before.
Well, that’s not entirely true. We define culture in Humanize (the human elements we talk about show up simultaneously at three levels: culture, process, and behavior), but we don’t provide a single-sentence version. So here is a first draft:
Organizational culture is the collection of words, actions, thoughts, and “stuff” that clarifies and reinforces what a company truly values.
To explain, I’ll start with the last word: values. Culture is ultimately about what is valued. That can include flowery “values statements” if you like, but it always goes beyond that. Enron had nice statements in their lobby about things like integrity and honesty, but that wasn’t really valued at the end of the day, now was it? It turns out making your numbers look good at all costs was valued, so that’s what people did. Your culture is the collection of things that clarifies and reinforces what is really valued by the system.
And that means it’s complex. I listed four things that create it: words, actions, thoughts, and stuff. The first three are about the people. Culture is a complex combination of what we say it is, our behaviors, and the underlying assumptions and thinking behind it. As you might expect, those three areas are often inconsistent, so you have to piece together culture, recognizing you’ll find some contradictions. We’ll say we value customer service, but we’ll also say we value being strategic and long term. One is proactive and one is reactive, and to figure out where the culture really stands on that contradiction, you’ll have to assess several things at once. Additionally, you have to factor in the “stuff.” That just means the non-human parts of culture. Tangible things like office layout, office location, office decor, dress code, what types of computers you use…they also reflect what is valued.
There are more eloquent definitions out there, and there are definitions that either go deeper or broader, but I like this one because it facilitates action. Words, actions, thoughts, and stuff give you things you can work with. They give you areas where you can experiment and change and learn. And they keep the conversation about values moving, rather than stuck down a path that leads towards a boring new set of successories posters–but no improvement in performance.
The whole point of culture is to drive better performance. You need a definition of culture that is real, tangible, and understandable in order for that to work. I don’t care if you use my definition, but pick one and run with it.
Just a quick reminder to all my blog readers that in addition to all the thinking and writing I do, a also have a consulting and speaking business! My work focuses on helping clients improve organizational performance by strengthening their culture. There are a number of different ways to do that, of course, ranging from up-front culture assessment and action plans, to specific projects dealing with performance reviews, strategy, or team conflicts. Below are links to the specific projects I do with organizations. If you’d like to talk more about any of this, please let me know.
Everyone I talk to recognizes that culture is important–it eats strategy for breakfast, it differentiates you in the marketplace, it helps you keep the best talent–yet no one seems to have time to work on it. My goal is to make the culture work more accessible, more short-term, focused and doable, because I don’t think most organizations can afford to put off working on their culture any longer.
So I took a look at the data we’ve been collecting for the last year or so on the Humanize website through our Social Business Readiness Assessment. We took the ideas from Humanize and built them into a 60-question assessment that anyone can take individually online (and if you’re interested in having all your staff take it and getting a customized report, contact me). There are actually 120 questions, but it randomly chooses 60 for you. The questions measure how your organization is doing in the areas that social businesses need to do well, like decentralization, transparency, inclusion, relationship building, experimentation, and ownership.
The results so far are interesting. We’ve had almost an even number of nonprofits and for-profit organizations fill out the assessment so far, though they’ve skewed toward the small side (almost half had less than 5o employees, and 60% had revenue under $10 million). The people who completed the assessment were from all different levels in the organization (13% from the C-Suite) and across all different departments.
For each of the questions, the respondent gave a score of 1 to 10, and it’s not surprising that in nearly all questions, answers tended to be distributed across the possible range. The overall average score for all the questions was just over 6.1. Still, some questions scored higher than others, and although we don’t have enough data to draw any firm conclusions, the initial results are intriguing.
The questions that scored the highest tended to be about decentralization, authenticity, and ownership. They were mostly about how organizations are becoming more flat, collaborating across boundaries, and sharing more information throughout the organization. There were also several questions about authenticity allowing employees to be themselves fully. I was happy to see scores in these areas trending a bit higher.
On the other hand, the questions that are scoring the lowest were about speaking the truth, including difference, and trying new things through experimentation. There were several questions at the bottom of the list that focused specifically on managing conflict. So it seems we’re having trouble with the stuff that requires personal risk and exposure.
Hmmm. So we seem to be growing more comfortable with the distribution of power in our organizations, but when we actually need to show up and act on that power, we might be getting cold feet? I’ll be interested to see how this shapes up as we get more data in.
Please spread the word about the survey. The more data in there we get the better. And when you complete the survey you have the option of sending the results to Maddie and me, and we’ll give you some feedback on your own data.
I suppose I don’t need ANOTHER reason to dislike strategic plans, but I was reminded of one the other day. I heard a volunteer of an association dutifully reporting to a chapter on how the national organization was making progress on it’s strategic goals. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but she eventually got to that fourth strategic goal: financial sustainability.
Nearly every association I know throws this one in to their strategic plan. Universities like it too, according to my google search. And don’t get me wrong–financial sustainability is a good idea, but folks, it is NOT a strategy.
A strategy, at the most basic level, is a choice. A strategy always represents a choice you made over other alternatives. That’s why strategy is so important. It’s up to us to make good choices in order to be successful, right?
Financial sustainability is not a choice. It’s not a path to success, it is a metric of success. My fear is that we include it in our plans because historically there were time periods where financial sustainability was ignored, so we add it in to make sure it gets our attention. That’s even more depressing than the popularity of strategic plans, actually. But that shouldn’t be an excuse to be undisciplined about what strategy is and what it isn’t.
We need to make clear choices. Everyone in the system needs to know what choices you’ve made, so you need to write them down in documents, and go ahead and call those documents strategic plans if you like, but for the love of Mike, please let those documents reflect clear strategic choices. There are better ways to get people to pay attention to financial sustainability than confusing it with strategy.
I was interviewed by the folks at Reputation.com for their blog, including questions about conflict, trust, performance reviews, and culture. Check it out.
I delivered a webinar with Brad Palmer of Jostle yesterday titled “Transforming Your Workplace Culture from Toxic to Humanized.” It was a great event, with 140 people viewing and listening online, many of whom had GREAT questions. It’s the first webinar I’ve been a part of where we ran out of time to answer the audience questions.
And there was a distinct theme among the questions:
Our leaders don’t get it. They’re clueless. Leaders don’t think they can change the culture. People see the leaders as incompetent. In the context of all that, what are we to do?
The participants were in HR, but I don’t think that really matters. I hear these kinds of questions a lot when I talk about creating a social business and making our organizations more effective (and, for the record, I also hear from leaders who feel their employees don’t get it…it goes both ways here). So here’s the advice I frequently give.
Don’t wait. “Proceed until apprehended” is a phrase we use in Humanize (attributed to Florence Nightingale). Do some experiements. Try some new things. Don’t wait for permission if at all possible. And look for experiments that will have some tangible results that you can share with your leaders. All leaders “get” improved results.
Don’t necessarily call it culture change. There’s not an absolute on this rule (sometimes it works just fine to call it culture change), but telling leaders they need to change their culture is usually a risky proposition. If they are the founder, then it’s definitely a challenge, because the existing culture is, by definition, connected to them as a person. And we all know how much we like it when people get in our face and say “you need to change.” But even if it’s not the founder, “culture change” is one of those phrases that can mean 1,001 things, so don’t get attached to it. Say you want to improve some processes, like staff meetings or performance management. They might go along with that, and you can start changing the culture, without calling it that.
Buy them a book. And no, it doesn’t have to be MY book (though come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea!). Share your perspective with leaders. Share the knowledge that you’re acquiring. To be truthful, they’re not likely to read the book. They may skim it. But it might capture their attention, and then they are much more likely to come back to YOU to talk about the issue. The first step to eliminating cluelessness is getting THEM to want to be in conversation about it.
Leave. Don’t choose this option without carefully weighing it, of course, but I think this really needs to be on the table more often. Life is short. Why on earth would we spend so much of it working for leaders who “don’t get it.” That frequently means we end up working in ways that are not consistent with who we are and why we’re here. I noticed this beautiful post yesterday from a palliative care nurse who captured people’s top regrets at the end of their life. The number one regret? Not being authentic. Or, more specifically, “I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” If your workplace is getting in the way of that, then do something about it.
We’re always going to face cluelessness. We should learn to be forgiving of it, actually (because you know as well as I do that sometimes we all are on the clueless side). And by all means, don’t let cluelessness be your excuse for inaction. Each one of us is the hero in this journey, and working through (and maybe around) cluelessness is part of what we signed up for.
I saw a blog post the other day that said it is “almost cliche” now to point out that employees are not motivated by money, as if everyone now knows that is true. Dan Pink perhaps leads the way in advancing this idea in his awesome book, Drive. He’s got very compelling evidence that people are NOT motivated by money , at least not in the ways we tend to think in organizations. Having a competitive base salary makes a difference, of course, but the incremental bonuses and salary increases that we assume will motivate better performance, don’t seem to when you look at the research. And honestly, Pfeffer and Sutton covered this topic several years earlier as well. There is a LOT of evidence that these incentives don’t work, and we’ve known this for a while.
So what happens? We still use them. It’s confounding. I’ve talked with a lot of people in leadership and HR positions, and they tend to describe a similar dynamic. It’s just somehow difficult to pull away from our system that leads with financial incentives, even if they agree with the research. Here’s my thinking on how this happens.
There are two realities in play here. One is more tangible and immediate: we like money. Pretty much every one of us will say that making more money is a good thing. We like getting raises. We like getting bonuses. We like getting a big salary. Heck, we like getting Starbucks gift cards. There is simply no downside to the offer of more money. It is good. It is positive. This is why we’ve offered it as a reward. You reward people with things they like.
The second reality is a little more complex and a little less tangible. Consider the research the Pink cites. It shows how financial incentives cause us to have a laser-like focus on the task at hand. This, it turns out, can be damaging for tasks that are complex and shifting (which is what most of us are working on). We actually perform worse on those tasks when we get hyper-focused. So financial incentives end up giving you behavior that doesn’t mesh well with the way we work. This will hurt our brains a little. We tend to think of “focus” as a good thing, but we can understand abstractly how that could be a problem. If we’re smart, we’ll accept the complex and abstract data here and shift our behavior.
There was a time in history when we were required to make the same shift. Remember when we thought the earth was flat? Well, no one remembers it personally. It was hundreds of years ago. But we really did think that as humans. And I can’t say that I blame us. Look around. It’s flat! I’ve been to the beach, and looked at that horizon and it is 100%, without-a-doubt flat. And not just one beach–every beach! The plains too. That’s the tangible and immediate reality. The earth is flat (like money being a good thing). Fortunately, scientists (and some brave sailors) were able to introduce a more complex and abstract reality that we accepted: the earth is round. At that time, we had to sit with the paradox of our immediate, tangible reality and this new abstract reality and find a way forward that accepts both.
The same is true now. Money is good and people like it. Individual financial incentives don’t improve performance. Let’s sit with those conflicting realities and actually take some steps to experiment with new ways of doing things. Let’s sit around the table and talk seriously about how to extricate our compensation practice from our performance reviews. Don’t just accept the tangible reality (I know our people like their bonuses) and dismiss this challenge. The organizations that do this well are going to gain a competitive advantage.
(And here’s the white paper I wrote on performance management that further makes this case)
I’ve got a cool webinar coming up next week: Transforming Your Culture from Toxic to Humanized. I’m giving it with Brad Palmer, who is the CEO of a very cool software company, Jostle, that I’ve written about before on the SocialFish blog. In my part of the presentation, I’ll give you my definition of organizational culture and explain why it is so powerful (and frustrating sometimes!). Brad will talk about ways to shift and strengthen your culture on an ongoing basis (rather than waiting for that perfect three-year transformation project to roll out). And you may even win a copy of Humanize! So join Brad and me next Tuesday May 7, from 1pm to 2pm eastern for the webinar. Register here.
P.S.: I’m still looking for responses to my one-question culture survey, and I’ll announce results during the webinar, so help me out and give me your one-click response!
Please help me out with a very small research project. I’m curious how people would describe their organizational culture–not in terms of what drives the culture, but simply in terms of whether it is good or bad. I’m embedding the survey here, so please respond and share it around (if you can’t see it, here’s a link):
