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.

Career Leadership Team Management

Five Enemies of Leadership

Posted on 27th April 2022by adrian.co.oprea

Most leaders are able to lead people to a certain extent, but only the best leaders are able to inspire and motivate their teammates to push beyond boundaries. This is because the best leaders have learned how to overcome or eliminate anything that may hinder them from being effective leaders. When left unchecked, leadership enemies can sabotage your success and may even lead to your downfall.

Do you know your enemies? Here are the five leadership enemies you must be aware of.

1. Ego

Ego is one of the worst enemies of a leader and yet one of the most silent. It can do more damage to a leader and his team than any other enemy because it goes right to the core of who we are as human beings. An overinflated ego can cause a leader to make decisions that are not in the best interest of their team or company, simply because they feel that they are above reproach.

One of the most common effects of ego is focusing more on oneself than the team. This can show up in many different ways, from taking too much credit for a team’s success to not giving enough credit to others to feeling threatened when someone else gets attention. When leaders are focused on themselves instead of the team, you have a recipe for disaster—people begin to feel like their work isn’t valued or appreciated, they don’t trust you or each other, and they may even start to see you as manipulating them.

Another symptom of ego is having a hard time admitting when you’re wrong. It’s a common human flaw, of course, but it’s especially dangerous for leaders. When you can’t accept that you made a mistake, it means you’re not learning from your mistakes and thus you’ll keep making them over and over again. If you’re too busy trying to prove that you were right, then you’re not actually doing the work of fixing things—you’re just trying to come out on top.

2. Compromising on Values

Leadership is about standing for something in particular and being the kind of person others respect, trust, and follow willingly. If leaders compromise their values and beliefs, they destroy their own integrity – the engine for authority and power; once it’s gone, a leader can’t do much more than bark orders at subordinates or threaten them with repercussions if they don’t comply.

The workplace is full of compromises and difficult decisions. That’s just part of the job. It’s rare that a leader can achieve everything they want without making some concessions along the way. But there is a line between a compromise and a capitulation, between tough choices and selling out. The challenge for leaders is knowing where that line is and not crossing it.

We can’t always control the situations we’re in, but we can always control how we react. When you’re put against the wall, you must remember that your integrity is inseparable from your character. A leader who compromises his core values for the sake of a position or money will ultimately lose both because he has no backbone and thus no leadership skills—and people will sense this immediately.

3. Complacency

Complacency is defined as contentment with how things are and satisfaction with your current situation. A complacent person is one who is already satisfied and will not push themselves to reach new heights and will not make others reach new heights either. They become content and stagnant in their progression forward in their mission.

Sometimes leaders choose to focus solely on their purpose, ignoring the completely quality of their work. While this gives the highest value in the short term, it becomes a disease in the long term. When the quality of work lowers, the Broken Window effect starts to appear, and leaders can become complacent with the current situation.

The enemy of innovation is success.

When you fall into a comfortable routine, it can be challenging to stay motivated, especially when it comes to personal growth. Complacency can lead to an attitude of, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” which is the worst thing for any leader. While your routine may have gotten you where you are today, that doesn’t mean it’s enough to keep your moving forward. If you’re not growing and learning new things, then you’re falling behind.

4. Lack of Empathy

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. It’s an awareness of both what people say and how they say it and how your words and actions will impact them. When leaders lack empathy, they can’t form strong relationships with the people who rely on them. In addition, they might be unaware of or unconcerned about their shortcomings as leaders, which can be caused by arrogance or simply ignorance of what makes a great leader.

One very real result of this kind of leadership is that these leaders tend to lose the respect of their staff members. They might be seen as uncaring, selfish, or harsh as they cannot change the lens through which they view the world. This behavior leads to complicated situations where the leader blames the employees for poor performance, cannot see past mistakes, and lacks the trust needed to form healthy relationships.

When a leader demonstrates empathy, employees are more likely to feel comfortable approaching her with concerns or questions. An empathetic leader will also be better able to communicate effectively with his team members because he’ll be able to adjust his tone and choice of words according to how he thinks the other person will respond best. This can increase morale by making everyone feel that they’re being treated fairly, making them more likely to be dedicated and committed to their work.

5. Not Challenging the Status Quo

Challenging the status quo is a tough job. It’s not easy to stand out and lead your team to success when everyone else seems happy with the way things are going. In fact, challenging the status quo can be downright dangerous. That’s because any time you challenge something, there’s a chance that you’ll fail. And that means that you might lose everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve.

But if you don’t take risks, your team won’t grow, learn, or evolve. It’s worth the risk, and I dare to say it’s your responsibility as a leader. You must push boundaries and be innovative and disruptive to achieve the best results for your company, team, and customers. You owe that to whoever believed in you to take the lead and you owe that to your team.

Challenging the status quo means:

doing things differently than how they have always been done before.
doing what you feel is right despite what everyone else says or thinks about it.
saying no when everyone else says yes.
thinking outside of the box instead of staying inside of it.
making mistakes that no one else makes because most people are too afraid to do anything different.

The Bottom Line

Now, take a deep breath, and see if you can recognize any of these enemies in yourself. Then, prepare for tomorrow wisely, and fight them so that you can hopefully lead the team to success.

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.

Career

In a World of Power, Stay Humble

Posted on 1st July 2021by adrian.co.oprea

The longing for and pursuit of power is nothing new. We live in a time where a business tycoon became president, police are abusing their power, and corporate greed is still an everyday norm. But, something about all of this is different this time around. We’re not standing for it. We’re seeing ego, greed, corruption and we’re calling it out. It’s important to stay humble and think twice before you speak – especially if you’re in a leadership position.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1973 this experiment went underway to determine if brutality inflicted on prisoners by guards was due to hostile personalities, or due to the power associated with their role. The experiment found that “prisoners and guards may behave in a hostile manner due to the rigid power structure of the social environment in prisons. Zimbardo predicted the situation made people act the way they do rather than their disposition” (1). Participants were paid $15 a day to be a part of this experiment. They were “randomly assigned to either the role of a prisoner or guard in a simulated prison environment.”

The study goes on to cite, “Within hours of beginning the experiment some guards began to harass prisoners. At 2:30 A.M. prisoners were awakened from sleep by blasting whistles for the first of many “counts.” The counts served as a way to familiarizing the prisoners with their numbers. More importantly, they provided a regular occasion for the guards to exercise control over the prisoners.”

Intoxication of Power

According to this psychology article, power itself can be intoxicating and that is what pushes those in a leadership position to edge towards corruption. It is suggested that those who engage “in wrong behavior simply because they can and they can get away with it” (2). The saying “drunk with power” is a prime example of this. In a way, it’s people testing the new and more expanded boundaries of their reality, no matter the cost.

Be Humble, Sit Down

If you are in a position of power, especially if this experience is new for you, you may be wondering how you can keep your morals and not let your position of authority go to your head. Humility in leaders is rare and it’s what makes the good ones last. It takes more strength and courage to lead with humility than it does to abuse your power. Humility is a sought-after trait for top-performing leaders.

In Jim Collins’s book Good to Great, Collins “found two common traits of CEOs in companies that transitioned from average to superior market performance: humility and an indomitable will to advance the cause of the organization” (3). Additionally, a survey that included 105 software and hardware firms as participants was published in the Journal of Management and stated that “humility in CEOs led to higher-performing leadership teams, increased collaboration and cooperation and flexibility in developing strategies” (4).

In order to be humble, you must know how to admit fault and take accountability. Leadership and power tends to be observed more through the execution of actions. Do you give others credit where due? Do you take responsibility and accountability? How do you act when you receive credit, praise, a raise or promotion? How does your team see you? In an organization like Netflix, open feedback is encouraged and even required once a year. This process allows managers to review one another and their employees, and one step further, allows employees to review their managers as well. Employees are even welcome to cite feedback of the CEO and other leadership positions, all in an effort to keep everyone communicative, honest, and humble.

So, the next time you find yourself in a position of power and have even the slightest temptation to see how far you can go with that power, take a minute to pause. Think before you speak. Check-in with yourself and your morales before making decisions. In the words of Kendrick Lamar, “be humble, sit down.”

Career Team Management

How to Handle Tough Decisions As a Manager

Posted on 24th February 2021by adrian.co.oprea

Everyone wants to be in charge until they’re the ones faced with a difficult decision. Whether it’s handling an upset client, bad blood between employees, an inefficient member of your team, or weighing in on a new product or feature – the pressure is on when you’re in charge. Some people freeze up, and this can make the decision process more lengthy and difficult, and even worse – can make you look ill-equipped as a manager. Here are a few steps to work through the next time you’re faced with a difficult decision.

Impact of a Decision or Indecision

Things progress and have an impact whether or not we give our input, so we might as well speak up and have a say in the matter. After all, that’s one of the exciting parts about being a manager, isn’t it? Being able to weigh in on things shows a sense of authority, responsibility, and leadership. When faced with a decision, ask yourself the impact that either choice will have on yourself, your team, and the company.

Analyze the impact a decision will have both immediate and on the bigger picture. Break this down by employees, clients, and finances if possible.
Prioritize the decision as to not waste time. Is this something that can be handled by someone else? Can you act as a team to get something done?
Eliminate non-essential noise and focus only on what matters the most. Every decision will come with the expense of consequences and multiple outcomes that might affect you or the business both ways. What are the important requirements of the company?
Wear all hats. Analyze the outcomes from different angles. How does this decision affect me if I was the owner of the business? How does this decision affect me if I was a member of the team?

Communication

Maybe your decision has to do with an employee you manage. Perhaps it’s someone whose chronically late, despite all your warnings. Maybe they got into an argument with a coworker and things are tense. These can be especially difficult to navigate because the problem is internal and involves emotions and wellbeing from people on your team. The biggest step to take into consideration for handling office politics and bad apples is clear, concise, and empathetic communication.

Yes, it is a place of business, but we all have emotions and pretending we don’t only lead to a festering of negative emotions. Take the time to assess the situation and if needed, speak to each employee individually who was involved. Know what you are going to say beforehand. Remember, “effective communication is imperative to inspire individuals or the team” (1).

Accountability

In a leadership role, people are looking to you to take accountability. This means how well you own up to your tasks, their completion, and the team you manage. It’s important to stay mindful of your role and that of your team when you’re a part of a bigger organization. If you’re not sure where to begin with taking accountability, take a step back and first define the problem. Layout all of your possible decisions and begin by first eliminating the ones that do not fit. This should help lead you to the most appropriate decision.

If possible, use performance data to support your decisions
Is there any evidence to back the decision you’re inclined to make?
Does the decision fit in line with the business objective?
Is the decision financially viable?
Is it possible to get an outside perspective?
Be honest with yourself
Are you able to get opinions from employees you trust on the matter?
Play devil’s advocate before you commit to a decision to think it all the way through

It’s Not Easy

We know making the tough calls isn’t always easy. In fact, Harvard Business Review conducted a decade-long study “of more than 2,700 leaders, 57% [of which] percent of newly appointed executives said that decisions were more complicated and difficult than they expected” (2). A lot of difficult decisions come with risk, and that can oftentimes be an indicator that the decision is important. While it’s never easy to make the wrong decision, don’t let the fear of that happening stop you.

The only way to find out an outcome is to make a decision and see it through. If you make a decision that backfires and it falls to you, take accountability and come up with a plan of action to make it right. What matters at the end of the day is how well you analyze, problem solve, and how quickly and confidently you can come to decisions. And, how well you handle the aftermath of any decision, no matter the outcome.