Hacking Culture

How do you ‘hack culture’? You might first ask me what ‘hacking culture’ means.

 

Well! It’s about creating a significantly different, and not an incremental, vision of culture – and finding non-traditional ways to move towards that vision.

 

Now, let’s get back to ‘how’ question.

 

You could use 2 different approaches to ‘hack culture’.

 

On one hand, you could get a large group of diverse people in a room – and ask them to throw caution to wind and come up with innovative ideas. In this approach, you are providing no structure/tools to think innovatively.

 

On other hand, you could provide people in room some structure/tools to help them start thinking differently.

 

First approach may work in a situation where team itself brings very diverse perspectives to table –probably because of their diverse backgrounds. Secondly team members are accustomed to a lot of change – and hence will not be too wedded on to the current culture.

 

Second approach may work in a situation where people in room might have very similar thoughts/ideas - probably because of similar backgrounds. Secondly team members might have a seen a long period of certainty – and so are probably emotionally attached to the current culture.

 

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Sourav

Outcomes

The other day I was reading a book by Peter Drucker. He made a point about ‘efforts’ v/s ‘outcomes’. ‘Efforts’ are only thing that exist within an organization. On other hand, 'outcomes' lie outside organization.  Outcomes matter and we need to hold people accountable for outcomes.

 

Ensuring focus on ‘outcomes’ is easier said than done. Every outcome can be seen as a mean to some other outcome/end. So how do you decide a particular 'outcome' is actually an outcome and not just a mean?

 

I think you can’t decide this post facto. The only way to ensure that correct outcomes are being targeted and met is through ‘goal setting’ rout – ensuring goal setting focuses on outcomes and performance progress is assessed against agreed upon outcomes.

 

Similarly, there needs to be a very definite linkage between outcome achievement and reward allocation.

 

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Sourav

 

 

Learnability

You must have heard term ‘transfer of learning’ in relation to classroom programs.  Initially this term used to appeal to me.

But over a period of time I started realizing a few things.

First, the term ‘transfer of learning’’ gives a sense that you start thinking about how learning could be transferred to workplace only once you have completed learning something. But I consistently find that ‘learning’ and ‘application’ are not necessarily different parts of process.

Rather, I find the notion of tying together ‘learning’ and ‘application’ and approaching entire process through lens of ‘relevance’ more powerful. I call this process ‘application of learning’ and not ‘transfer of learning’. 

Now you may say that I am talking about ‘learning on the job’. That’s surely one aspect of it! But you can simulate ‘applications’ in learning from others and learning in classroom settings too.  

Frankly, what I find consistently is that source of learning can be anything – a great read, an insightful conversation, observing someone inspirational, etc.  Only important questions to ask are ‘how is this relevant to my context? What are 2-3 things that I can take away and implement?’.

So entire process needs to be seen as an integrated one - with a focus on ‘relevant learning’ that leads to ‘relevant application’ –which in turn leads to desired ‘outcomes’. Secondly, you need to start seeing learning possibilities in any situation/experience.

Once you were to build a discipline around, you might start finding that your ‘learnability’ has significantly improved.

 

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Sourav

VUCA

Somedays back I came across a new term VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) which supposedly characterizes present economic environment worldwide.

What might a VUCA environment mean for mindset a company adopts to deal with environment?

On one hand, it could trigger fear and lead to ‘defending your territory’ actions.

On contrary, companies could start focusing on becoming better at adapting to change.

But companies could also choose path of seeing change as an opportunity – and pursuing, shaping, and exploiting these opportunities.

Which option should your company choose?

I think answer is context specific.  Answer could be different for different companies and different for same company at different points of time.

Intuitively though, principle of ‘if you can’t avoid something it might be better to enjoy yourself at it’ might be applicable here.

So 3^rd option – of seeing ‘change as an opportunity’ – might be better go-to option in most cases during these ‘VUCA’ times.

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Sourav

North Star

You have been creating and getting plans executed over a 1 year time frame.  But given nature of task, you need focus to be much more longer term.

How do you go about creating this longer term focus while maintaining current year focus too?

You could create a ‘North Star’ – that team will work towards in longer run. Flip side of this is that only intention might not lead to actions needed today to move towards ‘North Star’.

On other hand, you could ensure alignment of yearly plans to ‘North Star’. That will ensure there is some ‘coupling’ of yearly plans to ‘North Star’.

Maybe this is a good approach to start integrating a longer term focus into yearly plans.

Once this approach has got seeded in, you might want to start building ‘scenarios’/’milestones’ – how will outcomes look like periodically – 1/2/3 years down the line? What should be focus in year 2, year 3, etc?

So while you have stronger execution plans in place for current year, you start building execution plans in place for other years – with space for periodic check-ins – to evaluate whether there’s a need for change in year 2/3 plans.

In all of this, there’s a consistent assumption. ‘If task at hand requires a longer term focus, then that focus should get reflected in your shorter term execution plans too’.

Balancing this dichotomy of shorter term v/s longer term is turning out to be very interesting. J

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Sourav

 

Transitions

Currently I am in midst of a ‘transition’ at work.  I have been thinking about ‘how do I ready myself for next role while keeping focus on current role’.

Then I realize we face a related challenge throughout our work lives and possibly our lives itself - ‘How do you manage current while preparing base for future?’. There might be some additional elements involved in a role transition – building up new relationship networks, understanding a new context, etc. But more or less approach should be similar.  It also with right focus should be doable.

Here are few thoughts on how to approach a significant role transition at work:

·         Build a short term plan – 30/60 day plan – with milestones.

·         Focus on how you could ready yourself better even before landing in role. So an element of pre-work might be necessary.

·         Keep aside time periodically (possibly every week in the first month) to reflect on what you achieved against milestones and where you need to course correct.

·         Remember 3 quadrants of onboarding – networks (trust and working partnership with stakeholders), contribution (early successes), and learning (nuts and bolts of job).

·         Prepare for being uncomfortable. In first few months, you may be passing through zones of Unconscious Incompetence (you don’t know what you don’t know) to Conscious Incompetence (you know what you don’t know) to Conscious Competence. Be intentional, stick to your efforts, and don’t let uncertainty impact you too much. It should pay off.

·         As for current role, contract with your current stakeholders on what you will achieve in your remaining few weeks/months in current role. It is important that you leave still feeling on a high.

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Sourav

Teamwork and Collaboration

How does one move an organization from a culture of ‘individual heroism’ to one of ‘teamwork and collaboration?

Let’s assume that there’s enough leadership momentum to ensure the change kicks off.  Hence there is sufficient dis-satisfaction with current state, there is a concrete enough vision of future, and first concrete steps have been identified.

Using a change management lens, you will further need to:

·         WHAT - Identify performance Metrics and Execution Plan– think of the change as a project.

o   What are some of key metrics/milestones you want to measure and track?  Given we are talking of culture change, these metrics can both be ‘observable behavior changes – in individuals/teams’ and ‘business outcomes’.

o   What’s execution plan including RACI? Do you want a week/month/quarter wise execution plan?

·         WHY - Identify changes in attitudes, beliefs, and mindsets required – Our views on teamwork and collaboration are strongly shaped by our upbringing and education. Further our workforces are diverse in nature.  It is important to converse with employees on what are prevailing attitudes, beliefs, and mindsets, identify ones that are limiting, and agree on new ones that need to be pursued.  

o   E.g. – An Individual Heroism culture might be based on belief ‘I can win it on my own’. On other hand, a more collaborative culture might be based on belief ‘2 minds and/or 2 hands always work better than 1’.

A powerful way of ‘anchoring’ this conversation is through examples of how old/new beliefs have played out in failures/successes in similar other companies/situations/sports, etc.

·         HOW - Identify Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities – employees/teams will need to make shift.

·         WHAT - Identify role of Leaders and Managers and hold them accountable for it –

o   What role should these 2 critical role holders play? Do you want them to set the tone, role model, encourage, and/or reward appropriately?

o   Frequent communication is a critical aspect of entire change process. What kind of communication plan do you want to have for leaders and managers?  ‘Examples’ and ‘success stories’ can provide further clarity and positive momentum to change process.

·         WHAT - Roles and Responsibilities – how will these change for individuals and teams?

·         WHAT – Assimilation –for any group/team which needs to be restructured as part of change efforts – there additionally needs to be a focus on their assimilation into new group/teams.

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Sourav