Tag Archives: Teamwork

The A to Z of OD (Part III continued): C is for Climate

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Earlier in the week, I covered C is for Culture.  Continuing the letter C, this beautiful blog post about organisational climate is contributed by freelance OD practitioner Lucy Thompson.  Lucy is a creative OD Specialist, Changemaker and Coach.  She typically leads the people aspects on major transformational change programmes, focusing on delivering organisational effectiveness and team performance.

Creating the right Climate for Culture to Flourish

I was reminded today of the simplicity of a flower in nature – when you see a flower growing beautifully and thriving, the last thing you do is pick it.  You leave it to be nurtured by nature-  safe in the knowledge that this flower had found its place in the world and the climate it was growing in was enabling it to be the best version of itself it can be.

A climate in an organisation is often referred to as its culture.  You only need Google ‘culture’ and ‘organisation’ to find a raft of insight, models and diagnostics that can help put labels on what is happening at any one time in the organisation and its system.

Many an OD practitioner will tell you that culture is a direct descendant of the team at the top.  Leadership shapes culture.  It’s the way leaders walk, the way they talk, the messages they send and the way they bounce back when things might not have gone as planned. 

Creating high performing leadership teams

Taking this a step further, the leaders in an organisation are a team in their own right – they might be members of several teams but their ‘first’ team is their peer group and the purpose of their roles is to work together to steer their ship to success (whatever that might look like for them).  Therefore, if this team shapes culture, then creating high performing teams must start with the top team.  This creates the right climate for OD – simple enough? Yet why do many organisations struggle with this concept?

Patrick Lencioni is a true hero of mine.  He really puts out in to the ether a simple construct of a high performing team and its characteristics.  No long-complicated words or theory, no model that requires you to follow a tube map of arrows to understand the end goal.  Quite simply the five behaviours of a cohesive team are Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability and Results – simple when you know how, right?

 For OD to flourish in organisations, the culture needs to be right: it needs to enable OD practitioners and their practice to be the very best version they can be, and this means the work starts at the top.  Enabling the cohesive team can be the gamechanger for the success of organisation development and its interventions.

Next time: C is for Change

The A to Z of OD (Part III): Cis for Culture; C is for Change

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This is the third part in a series of articles that will set out the A to Z of organisation development: the principles and practices, the tools and techniques and the past and present thought leaders that have shaped the field.

In fact, this part is itself in three parts.  Today, I’ll cover Culture.  The second part to follow is a beautiful blog post by freelance OD practitioner Lucy Thompson, who will reflect on creating the right climate for culture to flourish.  Finally, later in the week, I’ll turn to change, which was in part inspired by my former colleague Francis Lake.  Francis is Head of OD at Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banking Group; he reminded me of the importance of the emotional response to change and the need to think long-term when planning change.

Many other people have commented via LinkedIn or by contacting me directly on what they would like to see included in the A to Z of OD.  Big thanks to all – just like Lucy and Francis today, you’ll get a namecheck when your ideas come up in the alphabet!  And if you want to guest blog a topic or thought leader, then let me know.  You’re more than welcome to get involved in the conversation.

C is for Culture

“Is this the real life; is this just fantasy?” so a certain Mr Mercury asked the world in 1975.  At some point in the Eighties, organisations started asking themselves the same question about their own existence, their own cultures.  Academics argued that organisations could have their own distinct cultures, their own shared values, beliefs and norms, and that there would be competitive advantage from aligning these with the needs of their stakeholders.  What followed is a global change consulting industry now worth in the region on US$250bn per annum.

A fair chunk of the consulting industry is about changing organisational culture.  I shouldn’t really complain as I am a very small part of this industry myself. Changing the culture is only possible if culture is real, or in other words that you believe the way people live, work, interact with each other and come together to achieve something jointly creates and re-creates the “ever-changing world in which we’re living” (McCartney… apologies, I seem to be stuck in some sort of 70s pop music frame today).

If we believe that is the case, then culture is real and if it is real, it can be managed.

How do you change culture?

Like any other change, a common approach to managing culture is to diagnose the current state (using tools such as the Culture Web), envisage a desired state and plan to move from the current reality to the new, future reality.  Much of a culture change plan tends to surround influencing the role of leaders to develop the culture through symbolic means, most notably through their behaviours (see: B is for Behaviours).

And so, many OD practitioners encourage organisations to set standards of behaviours through scripting them (“this is what we are looking for”; “this is what we are not looking for”; that sort of thing) and embedding them into individual objective setting, performance review and personal development planning.  Managers’ and leaders’ behaviours – such as more participative management styles, colleague engagement, recognition and rewards and encouraging personal development – both enact and symbolise the culture.

This approach has become pervasive across all sectors.  It uses culture management as a tool to advance organisational effectiveness, to stimulate motivation and to create linkages between the organisation and the employee – a sense of belonging, often referred to as a sense of family.

And when used purposively, it seems to work; it benefits both the employee and the organisation; and hence the customer and other stakeholders; and hence the primary purpose of the organisation.

What could go wrong?

If culture can be managed, it can be manipulated too.  I’m not sure organisations are like families. Organisations still tend to favour tasks over relationships, they still discourage emotional expression.  And membership of organisations is less permanent than in real families, particularly during periods of organisational change.  Power and leadership differ significantly, and family members are less likely to mistrust each other.  Also, families are predicated on Parent/Child relationships.  Many organisations work like that too, whereas the culture we seek in organisations is Adult.  Oftentimes, ‘Family’ is a poor metaphor for the organisational culture we seek.

To make things worse, employees who believe in the team-family metaphor can become colonised by their organisations.  The very same organisations who may then have to announce redundancy programmes in pursuit of benefiting one stakeholder group (shareholders/governors) over another (employees).

In the face of these conflicting messages, employees become ambivalent: on the one hand believing the organisation is adding value to their lives beyond their salary, whilst harbouring fantasies of autonomy and other forms of escape from the psychic prison in which they have become trapped. This manifests as worsening performance, lower motivation, and a desire for Work-Life Balance.  Work-Life Balance has become a socially acceptable form of dissent.  Organisations that espouse Work-Life balance can inadvertently make employees anxious.  I suspect Work-Life Integration is the antidote to anxiety.

The only way to avoid this risk is to ensure the espoused culture is real, which means it must be lived day-to-day.  You must favour relationships as well as tasks, encourage emotional expression, flatten power hierarchies to become more democratic, build trust through Adult relationships and encourage Work-Life integration.  This creates the right climate for culture to flourish.

Next time: C is for Creating the right Climate for Culture to Flourish

The trade-off between interpersonal tension and task tension

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The trade-off between interpersonal tension and task tension is not that well understood in organisations.  And yet it is a fundamental equation that can help improve productivity, the quality of work relationship and outcomes.

Interpersonal tension is a sad thing.  It occurs when people simply don’t get along.  This could be a personality clash or residual tension from previous encounters.  Oftentimes, people simply avoid others they don’t get along with, and that’s fine if it doesn’t impact your work outcomes.  But what if your job requires you to work with someone with whom you have interpersonal tension?  I’m not talking about a saboteur who actively tries to stop you doing your job – that would require escalation to a more senior manager or the involvement of HR.  no, I’m talking more about the persistent naysayer who you just don’t get along with well enough to be able to focus on the task at hand.

Task tension is a happy thing. According to taskmanagementguide.com, task tension can be described as a positive feeling that a person or a group feels when they have an interesting work to be done. Task tension includes feelings of zeal and enthusiasm that encourage people to intensively research the task, seek for ways to complete it, build their collaboration around these aims, and overcome many interpersonal problems for the sake of common goals.

Chart: the trade-off between interpersonal tension and task tension

The chart shows that, over time, interpersonal tension decreases as interest in the task increases.  The challenge is to work on techniques that overcome interpersonal tension quickly so that teams can focus on the task.  This moves the interpersonal tension line from A to B, and hence saves time, increasing productivity.

And so, the workplace challenge is first to ensure there is a stream of interesting team-based collaborative work available so that task tension has a fighting chance of overcoming interpersonal tension.

And then, the workplace goal is for task tension to overcome interpersonal tension as quickly as possible.

This requires:

  • Self-awareness of our own behaviours and how those impact others (“Knowing me…”)
  • The ability to ‘let it go’ and work with others as you find them (“Knowing you…”)
  • So that you can get on with the task at hand (“Aha!”).

Knowing me, Knowing you, Aha!

It is important to bring people together to reflect on their own behavioural style, recognise that of others with whom they work and begin to understand how to collaborate.  It helps team members and their leaders play to their strengths, overcome their weaknesses and work collaboratively together for the benefit of the organisation. This is of fundamental importance in today’s complex workplace.

And so, I have three questions for you:

  • Do you have the reflective practice in place to be able to do this?
  • Do you have the right behavioural insights to facilitate the discussion?
  • Do you have the right facilitator to bring people together in a way that values differences, seeks common ground and builds collaboration without the session falling apart?

I can’t help you find a stream of interesting, team-based, collaborative work.  But if you’re searching for your “Aha!” moment, I believe I can help with expert facilitation supported by leading edge psychometrics.

 

Jeremy Lewis

Committed to making a difference in building collaborative teams that get the job done

 

Three things The West Wing taught us about passion and resilience

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First posted on LinkedIn March 11, 2016

I had the great privilege of working with a health sector client this week, where I will be facilitating a learning programme in business partnering skills for a newly formed professional finance team.  This was a launch event and the Finance Director, as sponsor of the programme, addressed the participants.  He spoke from the heart about what he’s looking for from his team, using series one of The West Wing as inspiration.

I have never seen The West Wing, however I am aware of Aaron Sorkin’s work through the films A Few Good Men and The Social Network, and the wonderful TV series The Newsroom.

Spoiler Alert: Series one of The West Wing is set mostly in the White House as newly elected Democrat President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) goes about running the world’s most influential superpower (the series was aired before 9-11).  There are a ton of political and personal issues to deal with and the series ends in an assassination attempt.

What does this have to do with finance, business partnering and developing great teams?

1. A clear sense of purpose

In The White House, the President hand picks his team.  This is everyone’s personal, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do good.  Furthermore, the presidential team may only be together for four years, eight maximum.  In the show, they throw themselves in 100 mph.  Unlike some politicians – our speaker noted the series would not work in the UK as nobody would believe our PM cold be a hero –  Bartlet frames the team’s purpose as not to get re-elected at any cost, but rather to do good.  To set the direction they want to go and then to lead them on that path.  It is journey-based leadership rather than a destination-based goal

2. 100% commitment

This is about delivering on your promises.  There is a scene where it is getting late, near to midnight, and an aide has not prepared a brief that was promised ‘today’.  When challenged, he replies, “The day’s not over yet”.  Only if you deliver what you agree to deliver will you have the authority to advise and to influence others.  It requires 100% commitment.  It’s about being credible and reliable.

3. Challenge is crucial

You can imagine the behaviours that sometimes ensue in the pressure cooker environment of high Politics.  This is somewhat true for any workplace environment where power and politics play a significant role.  In The West Wing there is no animosity, however there is high challenge between senior leaders such as The Chief of Staff and the President.  In fact, Bartlet welcomes challenge to the point of hiring a Republican to bring challenge ‘up stream’ into the policy setting debates.  It’s business, it’s not personal, or as a colleague of mine often says, “Be tough on the issues and gentle on the people”.

And all of this is done with team members showing the utmost respect and support for each other.

So there it is – create passion and great teamwork through clarity of purpose, demanding 100% commitment and creating a climate of high challenge and support.  Easy to say, harder to do.  My goals for this team’s learning and development are clear, and we can work with that.

In The West Wing these three things went a long way to developing and inspiring the team, and helped to build the resilience the team needed in the face of everything the job threw at them, even bullets.

And as President Bartlet’s personal aide reflects later, “If they’re shooting at you, you know you’re doing something right.”

Jeremy J Lewis

@growthepig