Company Culture – Capture a Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity (updated)

Informed or clueless?

In the weeks and months ahead, you as a leader – titled or not – possess an opportunity that will never happen again.

As employees and workers begin to return to work, or adapt to hybrid working conditions, you have the extraordinary opportunity to re-fashion or help shape a new culture of productivity and innovation. (And, as research shows, there will likely be a price to pay if this issue is put on “ignore”).

An extraordinary opportunity

Why is this important?

The apocryphal quote from Peter Drucker that hung in the old War Room at Ford tells the story:

“A strategy that is at odds with a company’s culture is doomed. Culture trumps strategy every time – culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

What’s your new emerging culture going to look like over the next 90 days? It’s worth some serious consideration, as recent Bloomberg research shows that many executives are “clueless that workers are miserable,” with many “looking to leave.”

A recent Harvard Business Review note adds critical clarity of what now faces you as a leader: “Culture is like the wind. It is invisible, yet its effect can be seen and felt. When it is blowing in your direction, it makes for smooth sailing. When it is blowing against you, everything is more difficult.”

The challenge? As a leader, you already have an astonishing amount of issues on your plate. Your company probably pivoted – at least to some degree – to stay profitable, even alive – during the past COVID-19 crisis. You had to make things happen while many – if not most – of your employees tried to adapt and create a totally new work culture – mostly from their living and dining rooms – makeshift home offices – while working from home (WFH).

Now, according to research conducted by Bloomberg and others, many of them are wary. Many had family or close friends who experienced the effects – mild or savage – of COVID-19 firsthand. Many – like this author – fell into the temporary brain fog, fatigue, headaches, and more that came from actually getting infected.

“Burnout is widespread”

In some quarters, emotionally spent workers find that their bosses have no idea how trashed they are after 12 months of intermittent/non-existent child care, financial turmoil and stress from massive change. Here’s what Microsoft research found: “burnout is widespread—54% of workers said they are overworked and 39% said exhausted.”

Workers are now hearing corporate messaging that is tonedeaf to the point of being insulting.

“Leaders are out of touch. Sixty-one percent say they are thriving—that’s 23% higher than the average worker, so there is a disconnect there. They’re like ‘this is great!’” said a senior executive interviewed in the aforementioned Microsoft research.

Whether we like or not, old corporate cultures took one or more torpedoes amidship. Everything got patched together, and now cultures – emotional, complex, ever-shifting – will change again.

Will your culture shifts be guided and supported?

Leaders need to fully consider that as result of filling in the COVID lockdown vacuum, many workers have totally transformed their working days. They sat through endless Zoom meetings with choppy internet and cell phone hotspots, cats, dogs and kids all popping in and out, sometimes in amusing settings, oftentimes not. Somehow through it all – for better or worse – they actually got work done. In fact, in some – perhaps many – cases, the best work of their careers got done under challenging conditions.

What does this mean? Speaking of her experiences, a local award-winning network TV anchor recently told a group of us that she now actually preferred to work from home, even though she loved the TV newsroom environment. She liked being around her husband and kids, building new relationships that she found had been inadvertently neglected. She adapted and figured out how to interview, assemble, produce, and file complicated news stories from her home office. She wants to keep some of that, even though she’s prepared to suit up and head back in.

A lot of your employees probably feel the same way.

Fantasy vs. reality

Recently I’ve been reading a lot about how some employees never want to go back to work. I’ve also read and heard that productivity and innovation suffer when there is no in-person contact, that digital connectivity just doesn’t completely fill the bill.

The truth is somewhere in-between, which is why this opportunity to build a new culture is all important.

What’s a key element? The most-read MEK article I ever wrote – The Currency of Recovery – was read and shared by thousands of people over the past year. Its main premise – the building and sharing of real trust – is just as valid now as it was 12 months ago.

Any new culture building will require a simultaneous focus on trust building to be successful.

That likely means the old management rulebook needs some serious review, perhaps even total revision.

Strategy and culture

Drucker’s apocryphal quote may be true, but it’s also true that a successful comeback focus can include emphasis on culture and strategy.

A typical guiding path of strategy is setting a strategy vision, followed by formal strategy, goals, objectives, execution and, of course, measurement (KPIs, etc.). A typical guiding path for culture development is a formal summation of culture, followed by a statement of guiding values, practices, behaviors and results – which may be more difficult to measure, since they will have emotions mingled in there.

A key word? Practices.

As people start to return to work, they might hear the words, the welcoming “rah-rahs,” but you can bet that they’ll be watching to see what people do and what they model.

Will they be met with active listening, sensitivity and real displays of trust-building behavior? Will they be invited to buy-in, but also to contribute how your new culture is being built?

So, three questions to consider (which we’ll also take up in the next installment):

• How are you preparing for your culture change? (because it is now changing and will change further)
• How will you manage your culture change? (and how will it match your new strategy)
• How will you positively reinforce your emerging cultural change (and build trust and pathways to mold, shape and solidify your new culture so everyone benefits – including your bottom line).

Want to weigh in? Leave a comment or email me at mike@themekgroup.com

P.S. And don’t forget, organizational and cultural change happen one person at a time.

By Michael Snyder, Managing Principal, MEK