How to start a movement to change your company’s culture

Posted on 5th July 2022by adrian.co.oprea

Intro

If you’ve worked for a few years, you’ve probably had the back luck of running into an organization with a toxic culture. Or maybe the culture was not toxic, but it wasn’t great either – it kept going on a steady course, and nothing extraordinary made it rise above mediocrity.

These situations often trigger a sense of expectation from the organization’s leadership team. We naturally feel that if they lead the company, they are also responsible for our well-being. While this is true, most leaders wouldn’t even know there is a problem, and some wouldn’t even care – after all, things have worked like this so far. So why should they bother now?

This situation raises anger in most employees, especially the dedicated and talented ones. The best advice would be to run off and find a company with a culture that suits your values. Or, if you’re on cruise control, just ignore everything and go with the flow.

However, if you decide to stay and do something about it, here are some steps on how you could start changing the culture:

1. Understand the current culture

If you’ve made it so far, you probably feel part of a not-so-great culture. Before taking action, you need to become an impartial observer. Emotions can be very deceiving and, when not identified and appropriately treated, may lead to wrong perceptions and bad decisions.

Once you become a “legitimate” observer, it is time to analyze the current state of your culture.

Find what’s missing

Start with what you think is missing and determine the source of the events in retrospect.

Is it a recurring situation?
Does it happen to anyone else?
Did you hear anyone else complaining about these things?

These questions could be helpful remove subjectiveness from your analysis. In some companies, people might be afraid to speak up, so you might as well just ask them.

Test the mission, vision, and values

Not having any is a big red flag.

Are they connecting to what’s happening?
Is the decision-making process based on this system?
Do people enforce the culture through artifacts, stories, or behaviors?
Is anything missing or, worse, contradicting the culture?

Analyze behaviors

Watch the interactions and behaviors of the people. Interactions and behaviors seem like an open book as you walk “through” your culture. Scanning and analyzing how people behave can reveal a great deal of information.

Do they follow a particular pattern when it comes to decision-making?
Are they communicating effectively?
Are feedback and knowledge sharing part of the culture?
How are they dealing with the crisis?
Are people more self-oriented or team-oriented?
What’s the level of politics or gossip?

Map processes

Map processes and practices for a better understanding. This refers to both documented and undocumented patterns people follow in dealing with situations.

How strict are the processes?
What’s the level of freedom in decision-making?
Is it a flat structure or a hierarchic structure?
Is there an onboarding process?
How does the reward and recognition system work?
How is the performance evaluated?

Research history

Look into the company history and its stakeholders. Try to find out where the company comes from, who’s leading it, and why they would choose to have a culture like that. There could be many hidden reasons behind it that may not be obvious at first glance.

Are the leaders intentionally choosing and fostering this culture?
How risky is it to start acting differently?

This is essential to clarify before proceeding, as your actions may lead to your firing.

2. Define your movement

Once you’ve identified how things are and how people behave, it is time to define what you would do differently, why, and how these changes will help people in the future. Remember that movements are not about yourself but the people joining the movement.

Branch out

Do not drift from the vision and mission. While values might change to adopt a more effective way to operate, the mission and vision are the reason the company exists. While there is a temptation to come up with a better mission and vision, keep in mind that this is not your organization, and you are only doing this to improve the company.

Think critically

Be frank about how changes will fit the current context. While researching what you can do to improve the company culture, you’ll end up reading a lot of exciting ideas. Over the last years, the information on company culture just exploded, and there aren’t good or wrong decisions you can make – just decisions that are a good fit for the given context. For example, promoting an unlimited-vacation-days policy is ineffective in companies where people have low intrinsic motivation for their work or don’t believe in the company’s mission.

Tell a story

There’s no movement without a great story. To sell your ideas, you need an inspiring story about how things will be in the future and what great life everyone will have if you succeed. This is your advertising, and the culture is your product. Reaching prospective “clients” and turning them into members of your tribe is your number one priority.

Be heretic

Be a bold leader. People do not join the movement for you; they do it for themselves. To become an inspiring leader and make people believe in the movement’s mission, you need to get 110% passionate about your goal and 120% devoted to your success. You need to assess that failure is not an option, and you will do whatever it takes to get there.

3. Create a clique

Beginnings are the most challenging part of any project and can become a demotivating factor. Challenging the status quo is not easy; change will always be interpreted as a “bad” thing because it threatens stability, and you’ll definitely meet with resistance.

Core-team

First, find a few people to sell your story. These people might be the co-workers you spend time with or your teammates. You don’t need to convince everyone, and you surely won’t. So the first step is to test your hypothesis and see how many people are willing to contribute. The second step is to reach a 15-17% adoption rate of the total number of the team, department, or company employees, depending on your scenario.

Caveat: if you plan to change the company’s culture, it is better to start converting your team, then other groups, and then the whole department before going global.

Keep repeating

Set the story on repeat. The story of your movement should be played every day, with every occasion. Keep reminding people why they’re doing this, why it matters what they do and what the end will be like. Faith is a critical factor, especially in long-term endeavors. Changing the culture is not a few-days task. It will take time, and people need to be reminded why they do what they do to stay motivated.

Foster the network

Convince others to convince others. Once you have a small, stable clique, you can expand and start talking to other people from other teams or departments. Listen to their problems and emphasize by telling them you had the same issues and solved them with the new culture and how you’re doing things differently in your team. The advice you offer, hopefully, will start expanding around the organization.

Find an enemy

In some cases, a villain can help strengthen the need for change. Unfortunately, scapegoating is embedded in our nature. People love finding reasons or excuses for their current situation instead of doing something about it. The enemy could be the current culture or some individuals who are not compliant with how things should be. Creating a tunnel for negative energy toward a villain can instill a sense of battle and a desire to win. But be careful – this road can also lead to undesired results if not handled well.

4. Build artifacts

Brand your movement

Now that you have a mission and a crew, it’s time to brand your image into something tangible. You should give your unit a name and maybe create a logo. T-shirts, mugs, bookmarks, backpacks, office toys – everything you can think of should be transformed into an artifact of the new culture. A rewarding system might boost the group’s energy, such as giving prizes to people who recruit other people or who achieve essential milestones in your strategy.

Make it personal

Artifacts are powerful and create a sense of belonging and cohesion inside the group. But making some of them personal has even a bigger impact. For example, you could collect funny statements from your peers that you can print on bookmarks. You could also create artifacts relative to specific individuals’ unique skills. For example, you could create a brooch with an “ambassador” icon for someone good at influencing others into joining the movement.

Mark important moments

Celebrating wins attracts the desired behavior in your movement. Therefore, you should not miss any opportunity to recognize and reward such moments with unique artifacts such as medals, trophies, or nameplates. These items are best offered in a ceremony. Watch out for competition at this step, as others may start to feel they’ve been mistreated. Try to be clear about what an important moment is and what it takes to get there.

5. Make it visible

Show off

Now that you have the whole arsenal, it’s time to show it to the world. Wear your artifacts proudly and be sure others notice your culture. You should let the new culture express itself as much as possible. You’ll probably meet with criticism and negativity but don’t worry. This is just a sign that you’re on a good path. People do that when they feel threatened or scared.

Promote

You should make the most of any chance you get and talk about how you’re doing things now, how impressive your processes are since you’ve joined this movement and how good you think the future will be if everyone does what you do. This is when recruiting is at its full potential, and it’s practically self-sustaining.

Close the circle

It is good to make public the great parts of the new culture and let others know and use them. However, there should also be some “members-only” activities. This makes members feel rewarded and appreciated while instilling in others the desire to have that experience. These activities might include personal development workshops, work-related workshops, outside-the-office activities such as parties or team buildings, and so forth.

Conclusion

Changing the culture is possible even when you’re not in charge or in a top-level position. Leadership is built on influence, not authority. As long as you believe in your mission and foster a community of belonging, you have all the chances to succeed.

Change is about innovation. Take the lead and provoke the status quo.

Culture Organizational Management Team Management

How To Build And Maintain A High-Performance Team

Posted on 1st March 2022by adrian.co.oprea

As a leader, one of the greatest challenges you will probably ever face is building and maintaining a high-performance team that stays motivated and inspired to accomplish more every day. In a previous article, I broke down the concept of “high-performance teams” and what draws them apart from their less efficient counterparts. Therefore, it’s about time to go deeper into the topic and establish some actionable steps to create such a team within your organization:

Hire for attitude and train for skill

This sounds like conventional HR speech, but it’s true – the wrong attitude can sink even the most talented employee, while a team with diverse skill sets often outperforms one full of “rock star” employees who think they know everything. Second, make sure that everyone on your team understands how they fit in with the company as a whole and that they feel like they have an essential role to play in that big picture.

When it comes to building a high-performance team, personal compatibility matters more than skills and know-how. A CIPD survey found that 44% of workplace conflict comes from personality and working style differences.

Provide small and quantifiable challenges often

The feeling of succeeding provides momentum for people to work hard and motivates them to achieve more as individuals and as a group. Moreover, challenges determine people to rely on each other and collaborate to tackle them. Plus, if your team proves the ability to accomplish small challenges easily, chances are they’ll be able to handle more significant responsibilities down the road.

Protect the team from interruptions

To do its best work, a team needs to have uninterrupted time to get into the groove of working together – a process often hindered by bureaucratic barriers. Leaders should strive to remove obstacles and bureaucratic barriers that prevent team members from staying focused on their tasks. They should have a system in place to ensure that the team can communicate with each other and with the leader if they need something.

As a manager, you could eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy by reducing the organizational structure hierarchy wherever possible, decreasing the number of hands an issue must pass through before coming to a solution. Especially if the organization is small, a flat structure may work best to cut down on the number of layers between management and front-line employees. An inspiring example is Haier, a Chinese appliance maker who implemented an almost zero-bureaucracy model.

Provide strategic direction and purpose

It’s tempting to define success in terms of numbers, but what ultimately drives good performance is the passion for a common cause. If you want people to rally behind a goal, it has to resonate with them — and that means taking into account what matters most to them personally. Then make the vision one they can own by engaging them in its creation. A “top down” strategy will fall flat if people feel disconnected from it or don’t see how their personal goals align with your company’s larger purpose.

What’s more, without an inspiring vision leading the way, you’ll find it much harder to build a high-performance team. As Edie Goldberg, author of The Inside Gig: How Sharing Untapped Talent Across Boundaries Unleashes Organizational Capacity mentioned, teams that perform at the highest level need “well-defined vision/purpose, and specific, measurable goals, as well as an agreed-upon approach for problem-solving and decision-making.” Clarity, structure, direction, and purpose are vital ingredients.

Provide chances for physical interaction and outside of work activities

A difference between a good, high-performing team and a bad team is if there is any connection between the team members outside their shared tasks. Not necessarily friendship, but at least a nodding acquaintance or the ability to talk about something other than work (and enjoy the conversation).

Research shows that high-performing team members build friendships and are more likely to view their teammates as kind and trusting. Moreover, members of high-performing teams typically receive twice as much appreciation from their mates and managers compared to other teams. At the same time, they are 66% more likely to support a colleague experiencing a health issue.

In conclusion, even if we are past branding workplaces as a family, as it’s proven that such claims lead to negative outcomes rather than positive ones, you can still nurture healthy relationships between the team members more subtly. You can see your team as a sports team and focus on building empathy and a sense of belonging while defining a performance-driven culture that stays to the transactional nature of each professional relationship.

Trust your team

Trust is the foundation of every healthy relationship, regardless of context. If you don’t trust your team, you will fall into the trap of fear-based management, where you micromanage and control instead of leading, motivating, and inspiring. Fear-based management may get the job done in the short term but kills innovation in the long term – something you don’t want to do when building high-performance teams.

As a leader, you also need to be aware that individuals may require different behaviors to trust you and their colleagues based on their personal and cultural beliefs. However, there are some generally available principles you could stick to: sharing thought processes and involving the team in decision-making, creating clear and transparent methods of working, showing interest and providing constructive feedback, dealing with conflict by searching for solutions instead of scapegoats.

The bottom line

As always, there is no silver bullet or foolproof way to build a top-notch team. But using a combination of the steps above can help you develop and grow a productive, results-oriented team that will bring your business closer to success. With the right people on your team and a little bit of effort on your part, you can build a competitive advantage that will lead to more positive results for your business in the future.

Culture Organizational Management Team Management

Why Are High-Performance Teams So Important For A Company’s Success

Posted on 1st February 2022by adrian.co.oprea

Imagine a team where everyone is firing on all cylinders. Everyone’s at the top of their game and functioning as an integrated machine. This is what it’s like to work in a high-performing team, but how do you achieve this?

In this article, we are going to have a look at what this buzzword that’s all over the corporate environment truly implies and what it could mean for your company. But first, let’s make sure we truly understand the “high-performance team” concept:

What is a high-performance team, and how do you recognize it

High-performance teams are an ever-green leadership topic describing a powerful asset able to tackle the most common issues organizations face nowadays: the lack of cohesiveness and collaboration. A high-performing team is not just a collection of talented individuals working together—it is a highly integrated group that is able to leverage its collective skills and knowledge to achieve goals beyond what any individual member could do on their own and come up with innovative solutions to complex problems.

Of course, depending on the organization and its goals, high-performance teams may work differently, but we could pin down some shared characteristics:

High-performance teams are comprised of individuals that have clear goals. Clear goals are at the heart of any successful team. Without clear goals, you may know what you’re working on today or this week, but you won’t understand why you’re doing it or what the end result should look like when the project is done. Goals tie the team’s work to the organization’s mission, purpose, and values. They provide a benchmark for success, showing how far you’ve come and how far remains to be traveled. And they give focus and motivation — if you know where you’re going, it’s easier to figure out how to get there.
High-performance teams are founded on mutual respect and collaboration enthusiasm. Sometimes, a team’s efficiency boils down to members actually liking each other, which, let’s face it – doesn’t happen very often in the corporate world. High-performance teams enjoy working together. They celebrate successes together and recognize individual contributions through gestures that may be as simple as a pat on the back or an “atta boy” in front of the group. These people speak highly of each other without any pressure. In a high-performance team, everyone feels comfortable speaking their minds without fear of reprisal and value each other’s contribution through praise and empowerment.
High-performance teams have low turnover. High turnovers are common for organizations with a faulty corporate culture, as mentioned in a previous article (link). The opposite is true for leaders who build high-performance teams tied together by shared values. When people enjoy the company of their workmates, even for casual conversations over coffee, they are less likely to come to a point where they despise their work and want to leave. Once a team becomes stable, people become comfortable in their clearly defined roles, and the group dynamic is solid, things are likely to stay that way for a long time.

Why are high-performance teams so important for an organization

According to McKinsey, start-up investors often value the quality of the team and the collaboration between its members more than the idea itself – 90% of them think the quality of the management team is the most crucial non-financial factor. As Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s co-founder, put it, “no matter how brilliant your mind or your strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.” If you’re looking for a sign to build a high-performing team, this is it, and this is why:

High-performance teams are highly effective and productive. High-performance teams make the difference between just good and great results. They cut down on internal conflict, streamline communication, and reduce information bottlenecks. These factors can lead to significant improvements in quality, efficiency, and speed of a company’s operations.
High-performance teams are highly autonomous. The scale of the challenge of building a high-performance team is comparable to that of building a small company within a larger company. You need to select people with the right skills, give them autonomy, offer them enough resources and support, and create a culture that effectively enables them to work together. Once you manage to do that, your role as a leader would be to support them in achieving their goals – they’ll do the rest on their own.
High-performance teams deliver high-standard work. Such teams take pride in their work and go above and beyond to maximize its quality. Even if they work as a whole, each member is aware that their actions are essential for the team’s success. As communication is smooth, their decisions will always be well-informed, based on a deep understanding of the problem at hand.
High-performance teams are very adaptable. In a high-performance team, members act as peers, not as a hierarchy. Even though their roles are clearly defined, they are willing to help each other when something comes up and adapt to change more quickly. Every team member has an equal right to offer their opinion and participate in the decision-making process.
High-performance teams are more likely to succeed. One of the chief reasons teams perform poorly is that they are not cohesive. When the members are clashing with one another, are not on the same page, or are simply not working together effectively, the team cannot perform well. This challenge is eliminated when it comes to high-performance teams that feel personally invested in what they achieve as a whole.

The bottom line

In summary, a high-performance team improves overall performance by leveraging the strengths of each member. The most successful teams are comprised of members who take ownership of their tasks, foster well-defined goals, and create an environment that values constructive feedback and collaboration. Leaders should understand what makes a high-performing team function, implement tactics that encourage open communication, and focus on building teams made of individuals who are compatible on a personal level as well.

Culture Organizational 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.