Month: January 2022

CultureOrganizational Management

Leading The Post-COVID Organization

Posted on 17th January 2022by adrian.co.oprea

While the world continues to scramble to contain and overcome the pandemic, businesses will do whatever is necessary to ensure continuity and survival. To grow and thrive in a world post-COVID-19, companies need to demonstrate fast digital transformational capability into a pandemic-proof organizational model.

Customer behavior, media consumption, and employees’ expectations have changed overnight. Leaders that aim to keep their companies afloat as we are heading into the new normal need to become sharply aware of the consequences of the pandemic and the possible scenarios. In this article, we are going to dive into the pillars that need to be prioritized by companies that aim to thrive, not just survive, in a world plagued by substandard and outdated leadership.

A change of vision

According to McKinsey’s survey, the COVID-19 crisis marks the fundamental shift in the way companies are doing business. The research shows that companies have taken a quantum leap at organizational and industry levels, accelerating their digital capabilities by three to four years, particularly for customer interactions and supply chains. The share of digital or digitally enabled products on their portfolio has accelerated by a shocking seven years.

Two new-age technologies in the spotlight

Quantum computing and Blockchain are two new technologies that stand out and can be leveraged to further push the digital transformation. Even though a commercially viable quantum computer is not attainable yet, experts believe managers should prepare by focusing on vigilance and visioning.

Vigilance involves monitoring how quickly technological milestones are reached, while visioning refers to using quantum computing to identify future needs, opportunities, and weaknesses.

Blockchain solutions could be core enablers of the increasingly digitalized post-COVID world, providing plenty of opportunities for corporations and small businesses alike. The first thing a company of any size can do is accept cryptocurrency as a payment method, reducing transaction costs and proving a commitment to digital transformation.

Decision-making process improvement

The traditional executive mindset is well equipped for the “business as usual” environment, where decisions are based on plans and projections that assume stability. Leaders must make up for uncertainty by acting more quickly in a disruptive world, defined by urgency and imperfect information. Aside from implementing agile technology solutions able to suggest data-driven solutions, there needs to be a shift in mindset as well. When operational or tactical decisions need to be made, one of the most daunting challenges organizations experience is devising a strategy, learning, adapting, and fixing potential mistakes.

Management 3.0

As stated above, leading a post-COVID organization requires more than adopting new-age technologies. Making company culture a top priority and ensuring that everyone in your organization is aligned around the formulated values, switching from performance evaluation to performance coaching, and investing in your employees’ development could set a foundation of stability that’s challenging to shake up in times of crisis.

In the past, a manager was expected to be a high achiever and hold a stuffed CV, but today’s leaders must be able to connect with employees at an emotional level and generate alignment in their teams. This is what separates good from outstanding leadership. In this era of workplace transparency and flattened organizational structures, people want to work for someone who understands, inspires, and supports them.

COVID killed the traditional workplace environment

The most apparent impact of the pandemic is the increase in people across various business verticals working remotely, having leaders realize that providing employees with the opportunity to work on their terms is more productive.

A survey conducted by McKinsey in 2020 showed that some companies intend to shift to flexible workplaces due to the positive experience with remote work and even reduce office space by 30%. Of course, specific endeavors such as brainstorming sessions, negotiations, onboarding, and critical business decisions are best done in person.

Complete flexibility in the post-pandemic workplace

COVID clearly showed us that focusing on employees’ wellbeing drives better ROI than overworking them and sticking to outdated rules such as the 9-to-5. Fewer working hours are more efficient and productive in countries like the Netherlands, as workers motivated by the prospect of an extra day off are more likely to focus on completing their tasks and forgo typical distractions.

Complete flexibility does not imply a lack of structure. Leaders who want to keep their employees happy and productive should start by understanding their needs, as certain flexibility models should be applied at an individual level. While some employees may opt for unlimited PTO, others prefer a shortened workweek or remote work. Others are more creative and productive working at night. Perhaps the only rule of thumb is to focus on achievements rather than hours logged.

Moreover, many high-profile companies like IBM, Netflix, Buffer, LinkedIn, and Kickstarter adopted a premise that may sound audacious at first: unlimited holidays. Providing employees with the option to take more time off improves work-life balance and attracts new talent, as it tells people they are trusted enough to manage their workload and tend to their personal issues.

Plus, everyone with internet access has seen that meme stating that “COVID made us all realize how many meetings could’ve been an email.” The conclusion that leaders could drive from such a joke is that they should prioritize optimized meetings and processes in the post-COVID world.

The bottom line

Companies that will succeed after emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic will be those that didn’t rely on egotistical, non-productive leadership and made a conscious decision to strive for digital transformation, mindset changes, and flexibility. In the current framework, where resource constraints are a common-day challenge and one’s ability to deal with change is critical, companies need to optimize and transform their business models to align operations to emerging market challenges.

The companies that focus on quickly implementing efficient changes and making big-bet decisions to adjust their internal and external processes to a volatile business landscape will be those to thrive in the post-COVID world and beyond.

Culture

Five Clues Your Company Culture Is Not Healthy

Posted on 3rd January 2022by adrian.co.oprea

The fact that an unhealthy organizational culture can negatively impact your business is a no-brainer. Whether it’s a toxic workplace or one that suffers from an excess of team conflict, ineffective decision-making, or a lack of personal accountability, the end result is likely to be the same. Business challenges are rarely solved, customers are unhappy, and your employees are likely to resign on the first given occasion.

It’s about time for corporate leaders to be honest regarding the real issues that keep them from thriving in their field. Spoiler alert: it’s not because a certain employee missed a deadline or arrived late two days in a row. You have to address the root of the issue, admit that you may have a cultural problem, and then find ways to fix it.

Without further ado, let’s have a look at five signs that you have an unhealthy organizational culture:

1. Involvement scarcity

According to Gallup’s latest report, 85% of employees are not engaged or even actively disengaged at work, which results in approximately $7 trillion in lost productivity. 18% are actively disengaged, while 67% are simply “not engaged,” which means they are not necessarily unproductive but utterly indifferent to your company. They complete their tasks, but they lack motivation, enthusiasm, and willingness to share new ideas.

If you’re reading this article, you’re probably dealing with a gut feeling that your most brilliant employees are simply not giving their best or are slowly decreasing in motivation. When they started, they were probably coming to work with a desire to make a difference, but they never felt appreciated or listened to enough to keep up the sentiment.

2. Ambiguous communication

If you feel like the communication in your company is lousy, people are running in circles, not knowing what to do next, collaboration is missing from the scene, and there’s tension between coworkers when their responsibilities collide – you are not the only one. A Gallup research showcases that only 13% of employees firmly declared that communication within their workspace is effective. Communication provides a window into an organization’s culture and impacts its every aspect.

The side effects of ineffective communication range far and wide: from low morale, mistrust, feelings of meaninglessness, and lack of accountability to blame-shifting, burnout, and inability to collaborate.

Typically, poorly-functioning communication is viewed as an individual problem, a trait of the least skilled at the art. However, we argue that organizational miscommunication can often be traced back to structural issues caused by ignoring the importance of these three factors: shared goals and values, healthy relationships, and trust.

When people share a common goal and values with their coworkers, they feel comfortable talking to them–and they are better able to judge whether or not they can trust a given individual or officials. In other words, for communication to flow freely both ways (instead of being one-way), there needs to be some overlap between these three dimensions.

3. Low trust levels

Corporate leaders always preach the importance of building trust with the company’s clients but sometimes take internal trust for granted. If we call on formal research once again, studies show that a high-trust workplace environment makes employees:

  • 76% more engaged with their jobs;
  • 74% less stressed;
  • 106% more energetic at work;
  • 29% more satisfied with life in general;

The flip side is that lack of trust makes companies dysfunctional, hindering collaboration and innovation. Instead of fostering healthy collaborative relationships, your employees will develop a fear of sharing ideas, lack of motivation to take the initiative, gossip behind each other’s backs, and showcase manipulative traits.

4. High turnover

A mix of high turnover and short employment periods indicates that your company culture needs work. High turnover is highly disruptive, eating away at your innovation, continuous improvement initiatives, and efforts to build a high-trust culture.

It’s challenging to pinpoint the culprits: it may be the lack of values and vision that represent the driving force of your organization, the fact that your employee’s motivation is exclusively determined by money, benefits, and titles, poor leadership direction, or a combination of all. The result is always the same: employees lose their motivation fast, the dynamics succumb to chaos, and you lose valuable talent instead of retaining it.

5. Reputation issues

You don’t need a dedicated Glassdoor page to determine if your company has a bad employer brand that alienates customers and new talent. If there’s a group voice whispering on the internet or through word-of-mouth that “things are not ok there, stay away,” the morale is in decline, you never seem to hire new talent based on recommendations, and employees resigned in groups at least once, your company culture needs immediate improvement. An unhealthy organizational culture leads to presenteeism, burnout, high turnover – which will ultimately impact your reputation.

Many famous cases prove how bad reputation impacts even multi-million dollar companies. Tech companies have gone above and beyond to lead innovation around company culture.

Still, headlines show that it’s not all happy employees playing video games at work and discussing ways to change the world over free coffee and cookies. Terms like “aggressive and unrestrained,” “churn and burn,” and “toxic” generate lasting bruises on tech giants’ reputations. Sometimes, all it takes is one employee saying out loud that “managers pay lip service to core values.”

The bottom line

Culture is a nebulous concept, and it can be hard to identify the common factors that make up a company’s culture. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach or set of metrics, there are some early warning signs that a culture problem may exist. When these warning signs become particularly pronounced, they can indicate a deeper, more systemic problem in the organization. At this stage, an organizational culture assessment can really make a difference by identifying the issues and providing tools to begin fixing them.