Terrific Video

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Hearts and Minds

An article from the latest edition of our Cultural Intelligence newsletter...

I was talking recently with a good friend of ours, Glenn Capelli who was caught up in the crossfire of the recent industrial disputes at Qantas. He is a very frequent flyer with Qantas, but because of the strikes impacting on the airline, he chose to fly with Virgin. Not having flown much with Virgin prior to this, Glenn was surprised that, at least on his flight, they didn't go out of their way to welcome travellers who normally fly with Qantas, or to make themselves stand out in any way. Clearly, a lost opportunity for Virgin.

This highlights the issue of 'sameness' that we are all experiencing. A service or product provided by Provider A is similar to that provided by Provider B, which is also similar to Provider C.

While offerings remain the same, price becomes the point of differentiation. As a side note, this is reinforced by the fact that there are so many web sites that simply provide the service of price comparisons. Companies profiled on those sites are at least implicitly conceding they have nothing different to offer, other than price...

The issue of 'sameness' also applies to workplace cultures. Increasingly, people are moving from one job to another in the same industry for the sole purpose of earning more. On the presumption that 'all jobs are similar in this industry', people job-hop seeking ever increasing earnings, or threatening their current employer they will leave for higher offerings.

Last week, I was talking with someone in the mining industry, and I asked these questions, which ought to be asked of leaders in any industry sector... Is it possible, seriously, to capture the hearts and minds of your people? And if it is, would that make a difference to the way your people perform?

As I reflected on these questions myself, I wondered whether there were some types of work where it was simply not possible to capture the hearts and minds of employees. And then I remembered my experience a year or two ago when I was sitting on a park bench which had another park bench butted up against mine, back to back, outside our local shops.  As I sat there, the gentleman behind me struck up a conversation with a lady walking by who he knew. Remember, I’ve got my back to them, so couldn’t see either of them.

The pair were talking about the recent holiday break, and the gentleman asked the lady whether she had enjoyed a holiday.

She responded by saying that she had one day off (Christmas Day), but that was fine as she ‘loved her work’. My ears really pricked at this point!

She went on to explain that she used to work for one of Australia’s big four banks, but she’d had enough. She decided a change in career was in order.

At this point I was silently encouraging the gentleman to ask the ‘logical’ next question - ‘So what career did you move to?’ Sadly, he didn’t - the conversation moved on to other issues.

What transpired next intrigued me...

The pair finished their conversation and said goodbye. Then, the lady continued past me walking towards the rubbish bin. She was a cleaner for the shopping centre - sweeping around the premises and cleaning stores, out of normal work hours.

Her words came back to me at that point - ‘I love my job’.

The message for leaders?

If you are frustrated by people who you think fail to show initiative, or fail to see things through, or who seem negative to new ideas, then maybe it's worth pondering the possibility of capturing their hearts and minds. What's to stop your team or organisation from differentiating itself on its culture and being the 'stand out' culture in your industry?

As the new year dawns on us, maybe it's time for us to reconsider out thinking about what we presume to be the 'givens' in life and aim for a workplace where the vast majority of people say in all honesty 'I love my job'. So, is it possible to capture the hearts and minds of people in your organisation?

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What profession would you absolutely not practice?

From the latest edition of our Cultural Intelligence newsletter...

I recently watched a terrific interview on 'Inside the Actor's Studio' of Betty White, probably most famous for her starring roles in the Golden Girls and earlier, the Mary Tyler Moore show. White has won seven Emmy Awards (six for acting) and has received 20 Emmy nominations over the course of her career, including being the first woman ever to receive an Emmy for game show hosting and the only female to have an Emmy in all female performing comedic categories. In May 2010, White became the oldest person to guest-host Saturday night Live, for which she also received a Primetime Emmy Award. White also holds the record for the longest gap between performing Emmy nominations - her first was in 1951 and her most recent was in 2011, a gap of 60 years. She has also become the oldest nominee as of 2011, aged 89. She has made regular appearances on game shows and played recurring roles on shows including Boston Legal, the Bold and the Beautiful and Community.

At 89 she is a marvel. She is sharp, witty, grounded and has wonderful stories to tell.

Towards the end of the interview, host James Lipton asked White a series of short, sharp questions. Here's two of them, along with the responses from Betty White:

Lipton: What profession other than your own would you like to undertake?
White: Oh, zoo keeper, no question.

Lipton: What profession would you absolutely not like top practice under any circumstance?
White: (Without pausing, and absolutely seriously) I really don't know. I think you find something pretty interesting about almost anything.

This response stopped the seasoned and polished Lipton in his tracks! "What a good answer' he said.

Our work in organisations reveals that many, many people are unhappy in their jobs. Perhaps some of us need to take the 'Betty White' tonic. At 89, maybe she has something to teach...

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Strategically managing workplace culture

We're running a one-day workshop on 'Strategically managing workplace culture' in Melbourne on 22nd November. More details are here

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People working together

This is a brilliant video - worth a watch!

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Workplace culture and red alerts

Below is an article from the latest edition of the Cultural Intelligence newsletter

We think it's amazing how professional sports have transformed over recent years. In years gone by, there was a coach/manager and maybe some medical staff to support the team. Now there are dieticians, physiotherapists, physical trainers, coaches for specific roles with the team, medical staff, and statisticians.

The statisticians play a crucial role - monitoring the performance of the team's players and also monitoring the players in the opposition team during a game. There are agreed 'trigger points' when a certain trend occurs (say for example, an opposition player who is starting to dominate the play) and a red alert is transmitted to the head coach/manager.

Alert to a critical, emerging trend, the coach/manager must make a tactical decision to either let the responsible player know of this trend, or to change the make-up of the team on the pitch/field. This is instant and ongoing.

When it comes to workplace culture, we're not aware of any such parallel mechanism existing in organisations.

In most medium and larger sized organisations, there is a culture survey that is administered every year or two, and improvement committees are established to identify changes that need to be made to address problem areas, often in our experience with very limited success. If few changes occur as a consequence of the survey, staff cynicism increases and negative UGRs (unwritten ground rules) prosper - resulting in a decline in workplace culture. Ironically, the lack of real action associated with culture surveys results in counterproductive outcomes. In this sense, many organisations would be better off not to conduct the survey!

We wonder whether organisations might learn from the thinking behind statisticians in professional sporting teams. Once organisations are clear about the cultural attributes they need in place to be truly successful (ie they have identified their 'Key Cultural Attributes') leadership teams could identify trigger points that would indicate trouble with regard to each of those attributes. Once 'red alerts' were idenfied, action teams could step in to identify what specific actions could be taken to ameliorate those issues.

Rather than culture being a once-a-year consideration, culture would become an ongoing focus, with everyone sharing responsibility for its health and alignment with the KCAs.

If any organisations are doing something like this, we'd love to hear about it!

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What does he REALLY mean?

I've just put the phone down after speaking with a manager who is proposing a change of plans. Trouble is, I'm really not sure why he's changed the plans.

To put it bluntly, I don't know his real agenda...

This is an issue at the heart of workplace culture. Leaders say the right things, or announce a change of plans, or introduce a new idea, and people are left to interpret what is really meant by the leader.

A person can be asked to change roles. This can be interpreted as a reward for great work or a demotion to a position where they can do less harm.

A leader can announce a change in tactic. This can be interpreted as acknowledgement of a massive failure of the preceding strategy, or an innovative way to stay ahead of competitors.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that leaders' actions and words are interpreted via what people believe to be their real agenda.

How people interpret what leaders say and do hasn't been helped over the past decade by the extent to which people 'spin' events. Spin may have worked in the early days, but people have woken up to it and can usually see through it.

Maybe it's in the interests of leaders to own up to failures, or to acknowledge things haven't worked, or to acknowledge when they don't know the answers.

Maybe if leaders were a little more authentic, people would be more likely to accept what they say on face value.

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How a positive culture may be hurting you

An article from the latest edition of our Cultural Intelligence newsletter

The News Corporation/News of the World scandal has gained world-wide attention in recent times. The actions of News of the World employees have caused politicians and journalists across the planet to question what needs to be done to prevent similar incidents occurring in the future.

The News Corporation scandal is an example of what often happens in life, where we operate in a mode we might call 'crisis response'. An unexpected calamity hits and a series of investigations and actions follow to prevent similar incidents happening again. This happens in small scale and in large scale. It happens when a Tsunami hits Japan, when a financial protocol is breached in a large organisation and it happens when an angry customer makes an official complaint to a small business.

The security checks we endure at airports weren't introduced as a proactive measure - they were introduced as a crisis response following September 11. The legal waivers we sign when boarding a sight-seeing helicopter weren't introduced as a proactive measure - they were introduced to prevent litigious action being taken against them in ways that have damaged other companies.

So what has this got to do with workplace culture?

Many of the leaders we work with come to us in crisis. They realise - often late in the day - that their culture is really hurting them and they are desperate to try to fix it. Often, our work with organisations is a crisis response.

It's rare for us to be approached by leaders who think their culture is OK.

We've learned however that this represents dangerous thinking. We've learned that what can appear to be trouble-free, positive cultures can also be seriously underperforming.

There is evidence that shows that workplace culture drives performance. If that's the case, then the culture needs to be strategically managed.

When we work with leadership teams, we often start by getting them to consider this important question:

What are the key cultural attributes we need in place to ensure our future success?

Answers to this question inform the group about the kind of culture they need to build and lock-in.

Now, if leaders are in crisis response mode, there's a good chance this question won't be taken too seriously. And if the culture is not an obvious problem, then in all likelihood, culture will not be a priority.

But that's where there is a risk of a very serious flaw in thinking - as the absence of overt problems with the culture does not mean it is performing well.

A happy, positive team might not be characterised as a group that displays initiative - which might also be a key cultural attribute necessary for the organisation's future success. A dedicated, dogged team might not display characteristics of a necessary cultural attribute of being open and communicative across departments.

We worked with a senior leadership group recently and asked each leader whether they were leaders or 'do-ers'. As we went around the room, each person in turn said they were a 'do-er'. If leaders don't take the lead when it comes to workplace culture, then the workplace culture exists as a function of chance or luck.

And if that's the case, you'd be lucky to have the right culture, even when the next crisis hits.

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Insights into effecting change

There is a huge debate happening in Australia right now about the proposed introduction of a carbon tax. Yesterday a series of television advertisements began featuring two high profile Australian actors, one of whom is Cate Blanchett - and these have added fuel to the debate.

In the Australian newspaper, there is lots of commentary on these advertisements. One of these writers is

Adam Ferrier, founding partner and consumer psychologist at Naked Communications. Ferrier proposes that the advertisements may have a counter-productive impact by explaining what it takes to make an effective advertising campaign, in terms of changing people's behaviours.

Ferrier's insights into what makes an advertising campaign successful have application in a broader context, including organisational change. So, for any change-agent readers of this blog, take a look at what Ferrier proposes and replace his use of the word 'ad' with 'change initiative'...

"There are two key aspects to take into consideration when wanting to change behaviour - motivation and ease. The higher both are, the more likely that you will change the behaviour.

To make something motivating there has to be an incentive (something in it for the individual) and there needs to be a social norm around the behaviour (other people like me are doing it). Therefore to increase motivation for this behaviour the ad needs to suggest that everyone else has already taken action. Not a top-down message from Blanchett, but a peer-to-peer message from people such as me, and community groups and sporting bodies representing my interests.

The second factor is ease. Make it easy for me to show my support. Be explicit about what you want me to do, and how you want me to do it. Tell me a few times, and once I've done it, encourage me to tell others too. For the big dollars this ad would have cost to make and show, there are so many better ways to change behaviour than having an elitist talking head spruik a carbon tax."

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A brilliant method to analyse workplace issues

Below is an article from the latest edition of the Cultural Intelligence newsletter...

We've come across a terrific article by Vital Smarts titled 'Is Corporate Depression Putting Your Revovery at Risk?'

The article looks at the various issues faced by organisations during tough times - and references the fact that 'below the surface' issues (or in our words, UGRs - or 'unwritten ground rules') most impact performance.

Vital Smarts report on a strategy to access and categorise prominent culture-related issues based on their Story Collector methodology. This involves interviews with employees where two kinds of stories are elicited. The first focuses on examples of a 'really good day', when people felt most optimistic about the organisation. The second story collected from employees relates to when things did not go well - and specific details are collected about what got in the way of goal accomplishment.

Now, it's the way that stories are categorised that really grabbed our attention. The strategy involves tagging stories based on:

Permanency - did the event feel like a one-time incident or was it part of an ongoing pattern?
Pervasiveness - Is the incident confined to a relatively small part of the organisation, or is it widespread?
Control - to what extent did the employee feel they had the capacity to influence or control the problem?

As readers of Cultural Intelligence will know, we gain a fix on existing workplace cultures by undertaking what we call a UGRs Stock Take - which captures the existing UGRs in the organisation (linked to key strategic goals). These three analysis filters would be really useful to run across the outcomes from a Stock Take.

The diagram at right shows that issues rated in the top right quadrant can be considered 'Hot Spots' in that they are 'triple negatives'.

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