Do you want an agile, attractive, and modern organisation? Mindset and culture will always be at the centre of this aim.
I feel sad when I see organisations trying to strap on a random agile framework without the ambition to synchronise it with their mindset and culture.
Yes, you might improve your processes and even get more transparent as an organisation. Still, if you don't commit to working on mindset and culture, you will only get a set of improved processes that won't evolve.
If you are serious about transforming your organisation to more agility, attractiveness, and a modernised state, mindset and culture will need to be a pivotal part of the process.
The mindset and culture of people in the organisation is the decisive factor in helping your crucial customers feel that little bit more valued when they place a critical request or aid multiple teams to support each other early and proactively to deliver on time and meet critical deadlines.
In this article, I will use our experiences at inPositiv to illustrate key aspects and lay the foundation for positive mindset & culture patterns.
Not to oversell - we also make mistakes and learn - but by reading up on our journey, you might identify some action items for your organisation - small or large.
It starts at the top – leading by example.
Our corporate values tell us that we should care about our organisation, but what if leadership doesn't care about us? With increasing ambition, organisations grow in size and complexity from a coordination perspective. Leadership also gets more complicated. You can't know and form a trusting bond with every person in your company. The organisational values will need to take over and create a trusting contract.
Side note: If your organisation aims for pure efficiency and shareholder rent-seeking - I hope it doesn't - then you will probably never achieve the goal of agility and modernity - because agility and modernity strive towards effectiveness.
Your leadership team must ensure that the organisational values are defined, shared and lived. This mantra applies especially to themselves - leading by example.
In addition, leadership introduces the obligation to make strategic and difficult decisions in the organisation's interest - making every form of true leadership so tricky.
In the end, it boils down to three essential questions:
Do I want to endorse change if it may lead to a situation where I may "lose" some of my formal power?
Do I think our organisational values are an honest representation of who we are, and am I embodying them to the full possible extent?
Am I doing my best to be a good citizen within the organisation, and do I also hold others accountable if I see violations of our values?
We are all human, and all of us may have a bad day here and there, but do you think your leadership team could answer the raised questions with a distinctive "Yes!"?
If this is the case, you have a good foundation for achieving maximal impact with a modernisation initiative. If not, it may be time for an intensive dialogue with your leadership team.
Build on self-organising teams.
Self-organised teams are an excellent approach to solving complex challenges and will help to achieve this goal. However, two aspects of this are incredibly challenging. 1. How to enable self-leadership and 2. how to align strategic and tactical flight levels.
Self-organised settings provide room for bikeshedding and free riding. However, being self-organised does not mean being chaotic or intransparent.
Probably even explicitly the other way around. Being self-organised requires a high level of discipline.
These are also some aspects we consider when enabling self-leadership:
Everybody is in the loop where we aim at a strategic level - you need to know.
Everybody can participate in defining goals on a tactical level - we need expertise.
We delegate as much responsibility as possible - give it a try.
We hold each other accountable and foster transparency - no bikeshedding or free-riding.
You can always ask for more or less responsibility - find your learning zone.
It is no secret that we are using a tailor-made adaptation of the OKR framework methodology to facilitate the process. But also, if OKR currently seems to be the "state-of-the-art silver bullet", it is not a guarantee for a successful self-organised system.
Just recently, I, e.g. heard the statement - "It's an OKR thing. OKR = The stuff we do on top of regular work on Saturdays".
This statement reflects a well-meant effort gone wrong.
Enabling and strengthening self-leadership is a challenging growth process. And as so often, a good starting point is essential, but the execution is the most critical part.
How to align the strategic and the tactical flight levels?
Fast-growing or long-established organisations often have the problem of disconnecting strategic and tactical flight levels. As a result, employees don't know why they perform a particular task in daily business - they can't make the best decisions on an operational level because they don't know where the organisation wants to go in the long run.
They may not even care anymore because of all the rhetorical strategies that do not result in tangible results on an operational basis.
"Not caring anymore" is the most extreme case to be avoided at all costs.
One of the reasons why we work in organisations is specialisation.
Organisations enable us to focus on what we are passionate about and where our strengths reside - this also applies to the strategic and tactical layers. Strategical and tactical/operational thinking require different approaches - from how long-term you need to think, how big-picture you need to think, and how much uncertainty you need to consider when thinking.
I, for example, know our strategic game plan well, but I am responsible for our daily-business operational level. Therefore, this is also the view I hold and contribute most to. Of course, the people in our organisation responsible for defining strategy can always consult me, and luckily they also do. Still, my current role demands a different focus and thinking, so I would refrain from making strategic decisions.
Isn't this contradicting the problem statement I started with?
No, it doesn't. You need to separate strategic and tactical flight levels. If you don't, you end up with no clear separation. You won't be able to make the hard strategical decisions needed for the organisation to renew itself constantly.
But again, you need to ensure that the layers "connect" frequently and "honestly". So, for example, if the strategic level doesn't get insights into what is required on a tactical level and if the tactical level doesn't understand the relevance of the strategic level, the intended gap to create creativity will produce a gap that leads to inertia.
We are still a young organisation, so staying on top of things is essential. We have at least weekly check-ins spanning strategic and tactical levels to ensure they are in lockstep. This may be too extreme for big organisations - but we see value in it and will keep it happening for as long as feasible.
We propose short cycles, a participative goal-setting system and rich communication as solution vectors.
How to keep an organisational culture healthy?
Keeping an organisational culture healthy is the most complex challenge. We all know how challenging it is to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships. However, in an organisation, things become even more complicated. Because an organisation is an abstract entity, you may also have to maintain relationships with people you don't like on a personal level.
As so often, transparency is your friend. But transparency is also challenging. So often, people misinterpret an "agile environment" as something super dynamic without rules, which is entirely wrong. On the contrary, an "agile environment" is built on clear rules and transparency, facilitating controlled change when needed. This pattern can also be applied to sustain a healthy organisational culture.
Nowadays, there is a lot of talking about healthy organisational cultures. Specific cues come to mind, like "employer branding", "knowledge workers", "psychological safety", and "war for talents". But you can keep it relatively simple.
Three questions to ask while reviewing your corporate culture:
Transparency - is transparency given? For example, can people ask questions, can people be honest, and can people speak up? A basic level of transparency always needs to be there - otherwise, unhealthy things will happen off the record.
Feedback - is there feedback? Do feedback cycles happen, or do we allow things to fester? A minimal feedback cycle needs to be established - otherwise, the culture can't heal when it is unhealthy.
Values - is there a basic set of shared values? For example, how should humans interact with each other, and what the organisation wants to achieve? An elemental set of shared values need to exist - otherwise, a culture will slowly dissolve into potentially conflicting subcultures.
We propose regular and structured check-ins, easy and direct communication, and a shared and lived set of organisational values as probate means to keep an organisational culture healthy.
