In 2006, Peter Drucker wrote that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Why does it even matter? Culture is the heartbeat of your organization.

Culture is values and beliefs in action and is a business and mission imperative. It influences, guides, and governs the choices and behaviors that act together in support of (or contrary to) the strategic intent of an organization and/or individual intent. It is dynamic because it is a manifestation of how people think, feel, their values, assumptions, relationships, and experiences. Your people ARE your culture.

A positive culture breeds engaged and happier employees who are more likely to be more fulfilled in their jobs and perform better. Strong leadership around establishing values and principles aligned to the desired employee experience is a key to driving positive organizational culture.

“As a leader, how do I even know whether I need to address culture?” If you are facing something that requires a collective response or action, you are addressing culture within your organization.

We define culture as values and beliefs in action to accomplish mission and business outcomes.

Culture Shifts in Real-Time

There are various domains of culture, and it is important for leaders to identify, notice and mind them with intentionality. For example, one domain that is relevant across all organizations today is workplace culture.

While the dynamics of workplace culture continually shift, those shifts were exacerbated by a global pandemic. Suddenly folks weren’t working in their workplaces (in person) or engaging in their typical hybrid models (now folks are working from home more than ever). For the first time, we have seen into people’s homes, met their kids and pets, and perhaps heard their dryer running in the background. Our ways of working together have evolved…forever.

This has all led to the hybrid workplace as a cultural evolution. While organizations have evolved to enable new workplace norms, employees are experiencing the work environment in unique and challenging ways. Here are a few examples of hybrid-induced cultural tensions:

Inclusion: Some people are discovering that the hybrid environment is invite-only. In effect, people are more readily excluded when everyone isn’t together. And we’re finding it’s not usually nefarious but making connections and including the right folks has become harder than ever.
Words of Affirmation: We’ve talked to several historical high performers that thrive on the accolades they often experienced in an in-person environment. Reinforcement in their value is proving harder to come by in a hybrid environment, leading to less enthusiasm.
Human Engagement: Most tangibly, people are finding it hard to connect with their coworkers like they used to.

These examples place a given organization’s mission at risk. Just think back to our definition of culture. It’s harder to rally around a shared set of values and beliefs when you’re not experiencing a unified sense of purpose and connection you used to feel when in person and/or amongst colleagues.

What To Do

Positive culture change requires an organization’s leaders to take action and for people to respond. An organization’s senior leaders and its people are involved in nearly every project we take on – from customer experience to lead to strategy engagements.

For example, our Workplace team may be working with an organization to create a post-pandemic workspace for its teams. But, if that team is currently operating in a hybrid or at-home environment, key voices may get lost. Feeling unheard can chip away at even the most engaged and connected cultures. Ultimately, it may manifest in anxiety, not only about going back to the office but what kind of office they’ll be returning to. This makes it critical that leaders take the extra steps required to connect with their people no matter their location – this challenge requires collective action.

Our belief in connecting with leaders as people first sets us apart in a world where culture is often confused with “human capital.” When you take a people-first approach, it requires a shift in perspective. Leaders realize people aren’t a problem to solve, they’re the lynchpin for shifting culture, elevating employee experience, and achieving your mission.

If you are facing something that requires a collective response or action, you are addressing culture within your organization.

A Flexible Model to Meet Specific Needs

I believe our cross-Solution Area consulting model enables us to connect with leaders, understand their strategy, and implement tailored solutions that propel collective action. We have the capacity to help leaders and organizations beyond a single challenge; we help leaders recognize the cultural aspects of their challenges and build capacity in systems, processes, and people that result in evidenced-based change. What’s so exciting for me is that culture work presents the opportunity to create real and sustained change in an organization and create an even more meaningful and purposeful experience for its people.

You have heard from my colleagues Yasmeen Burns and Sonya Patel. We collectively believe our clients can enter almost any type of engagement with us knowing that we will think beyond the box to make sure we address any issue that would prevent the solution from “sticking.” It’s the difference between a hammer and a toolbox. Perhaps one does a specific job well, but that may be it. On the other hand, the toolbox contains the hammer along with everything else you need to complete your mission. The Clearing is the toolbox.

What’s Next

I would love to chat about organizational culture and change with you and the variety of its domains (Workplace, DEIA, Risk, Safety, and Security, Resilience, among others) – reach out anytime at jason.miller@theclearing.com.

         .           

            Sonya Patel                                        Jason Miller                                  Yasmeen Burns
Strategy & Leadership                                  Culture                                  Customer Experience

Like many of you, I’ve been engaged in ongoing dialogues about the hybrid work environment. Hybrid is not new by any means; however, some organizations never thought hybrid was possible for them. The pandemic became the impetus for many workplace changes, including a sudden (and necessary) shift into a work-from-home environment for many folks who previously spent their working days in an office – and organizations that thought a hybrid or WFH model wouldn’t work for them.

For many, that shift was welcome, eliminating long commutes and allowing for more time with family without negative impacts on productivity. Others missed the energy of their offices and were eager to return. With vaccination rates continuing to rise, more organizations are exploring opportunities to return to the office (while taking into consideration the safety of their people given the prevalence of the Delta variant) – and in some cases, unintentionally creating a divide between those working from home, in the office, or in a hybrid capacity.

“A hybrid model is more complicated than a fully remote one. At scale, using it will be an unprecedented event in which all kinds of norms that have been accepted practice for decades will be put to the test. Leaders are a long way from knowing how it will work.”- McKinsey Quarterly

Expectations vs. Reality

There are inconsistencies between what executives expect and what their employees may want or need related to re-entry. According to a recent McKinsey Quarterly article, more than three-quarters of C-suite executives surveyed report they expected the typical “core” employee to be back in the office three or more days a week. On the other hand, the same survey showed nearly three-quarters of around 5,000 surveyed employees would like to work from home for two or more days per week, and more than half want at least three days of remote work.

This is not a right versus wrong scenario. In fact, it gives us the opportunity to optimize our staffing models given what we now know about our ability to be productive in this ambiguous environment. The hybrid model will have continued relevancy and leaders will need to consider new and creative ways to optimize it (at scale and more explicitly define what hybrid means to your organization). That means leaders must start now to foster inclusivity in this environment to avoid a “us vs. them” situation between those that work from the office or out of the office.

“As leaders, we need to ensure our teams feel supported, engaged, and have the ability to perform at their best, even if they are working in a new model (hybrid or otherwise.)”

What to Consider When Thinking About Inclusivity

As The Clearing’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access (DEIA) Executive Sponsor, the question of inclusivity in this environment has been top of mind. We focus on a “people-first” approach to problem-solving with our clients – we think “inside-out” about how an organization’s employees are impacted by a given situation to create solutions that help people feel safe and provide what they need to do their best work. To that end, our Workplace team has pulled together four critical areas leaders must examine when it comes to inclusivity in the hybrid workplace to ensure their people feel safe, supported, and empowered to thrive.

1. Does your organization have the right technology in place?

We have found that default technology can cause significant inequities in how people experience the hybrid workplace. Leaders should now assume every meeting is hybrid to avoid unintentionally leaving people out of the conversation. Check out our Hybrid Meetings Technology Checklist to ensure your tech setup meets the needs of in-person and remote team members. Remember to establish cultural norms around the use of that technology. For example, is everyone expected to be on camera? If so, leaders must set that example.

2. Do your people have the necessary access to that technology?

Home WiFi network connectivity is inconsistent due to geographic location, network provider availability, affordability of various network packages, among a variety of other reasons. This can cause some unintended inequities in the hybrid workplace. And depending on your line of business, your people may not be in the office OR at home – they could be on the road or at client sites. Ask yourself:

Should upgraded home internet become a company benefit to guarantee team members don’t have to turn their cameras off due to low bandwidth? This can ensure no one is out of sight, out of mind – and curbs perceptions that some people are contributing less simply because they are not seen.
Can my team easily gain access to required systems in a remote setting? Nothing is more frustrating than not being able to get your job done simply because of an antiquated VPN system or closed networks that require being in a specific location to access. These are experiences that we may overlook that can lead to people feeling excluded simply because they may not be able to come into the office.

3. Do you have the right people “at the table?”

Again, the adage “out of sight, out of mind” holds true: for decades, the equity gap in the workplace has been defined by who is invited to the table. Gender, color, and age (and other identity characteristics) often dictated that, intentionally and unintentionally. Now that many more people are remote (and potentially out of sight), this equity gap is at risk of getting bigger across demographics.

Pro Tip: Who is at your table informs your collective success. That means be intentional when planning meetings. Ask yourself:

What is your desired outcome?
Who should be there?
Is there equity? That is, do you have the right backgrounds of experience, gender balance, race balance, and roles/levels to enable decision-making and ensure relevance to stakeholders?

This enables leaders to make decisions that best enable desired outcomes and are reflective of the interests and demographics of your customers, your organization, and your partners.

4. Are you facilitating knowledge sharing across teams and locations?

Despite the flexibility the hybrid model offers, there can be a significant loss of information sharing that occurs simply from people being close to one another. For example, your teams may no longer know what is happening on other projects if they are not in the office. This limits their ability to hear what their colleagues may be working on that can add value to their own project or where their expertise may be helpful. That is suddenly lost in this new environment. Few things make people feel more excluded than feeling out of the loop. This makes it critical to facilitate knowledge sharing in novel ways that work for your organization. Here are a few creative ideas to consider:

1) Invite colleagues to join your team meetings to share what they’re working on. Have them provide an explanation and prepare some probing questions to further the discussion. (e.g., “What are you most proud of that your project accomplished? Why?”; “Was there something that you thought was going to be successful but missed the mark? What did you learn?”). Similarly, include more junior team members in leadership meetings so they can hear what and how you’re prioritizing across the organization, how decisions are made, and gain other relevant knowledge for their career growth.

2) If you have new team members, consider inviting a tenured colleague to team meeting(s) to talk about their journey and answer questions.

3) Use your internal communication platform(s) (e.g., Slack) to stay connected, not just about the work of the day, but also to encourage sharing exciting news, personal achievements, and opportunities. It’s a fun way to learn more about each other.

4) Facilitate connections between individuals across teams. Do you see shared interests or problem sets between two individuals across teams? Connect those individuals so they can explore their shared connections for informal knowledge sharing, increased social connectivity, and additional innovation across teams.

5) Encourage “brain trusts” where individuals across teams come together to solve a particular problem. These “brain trusts” lead to better solutions and highlight interconnectedness between individuals’ skill sets to spur subsequent connections.

What Comes Next

Leaders have been challenged to establish new ways of doing work, engaging with one another, and thriving despite daunting circumstances over the course of the last year and a half. How do we maximize our teams’ performance to achieve our strategic goals when we may not always “see” them as we once did?

As leaders, we need to ensure our teams feel supported, engaged, and have the ability to perform at their best, even if they are working in a new model (hybrid or otherwise). Facilitating inclusive working environments using some of the shifts above is a great first step to continue to create an engaging and safe work environment where your team can meet and exceed organizational goals.