WEW 24 - Changing Company Culture

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In this week’s Email:

This week's issue is on cultural change, and in the new format, I break down some thoughts and tactics on 3 levels.

✧ What it means
✧ How to apply it to your team/organization
✧ How it affects you as an individual today

What It Means

What is Culture?

Your culture at work is how work is done. Is it missed deadlines and shouting matches? After-work gatherings and mutual support? Maybe it's a mode or being where everything is ALWAYS done early no matter the cost, but you do so to maintain your summer Fridays.

Culture is NOT the mission, vision, values, or statement from HR. Culture is also rarely consistent throughout a company. How does your team operate that is different from the teams of your peers? Is there that one department you just can't get to cooperate with yours?

These different subcultures are often the only ones we actually have control over adjusting and sculpting. The macro culture of how these subcultures relate to each other is way harder to adjust.

When planning what you want the culture of your slice of the organization to be, you need to be intentional and relate it back to what the organization needs done and the best way to achieve that today and again in the future.

How To Apply It At Work

Planning Cultural Change

If the way your team is working doesn't sit right with you either because of performance or morale, you know it’s time for a change.

To plan an effective transformation of how your team works you will need to devise newly incentivized behaviors for today and another set for your ideal state. If you only strive for the ideal you will never get there. Cultural Change happens from action NOT thinking about taking action.

Planning Changes for Today

Your near-term changes are going to be harsher, faster, and met with more resistance than your long-term changes.

If you are trying to fix your team’s relationship to accountability you will need to have what seems like sudden and serious conversations with your managers on what isn't working and what the repercussions have been to the org because of the way things are.

If you are trying to get your team to work harder towards deadlines it may mean mandating overtime.

These dictator-like actions can NOT become your standard operating procedure but they will be necessary to get the team focused on immediate change and understanding the necessity of that change. You will need to coach individuals through how they feel about these sharp differences and have concrete examples as to ways things won't be this bad forever. Your goal is to model what MUST be done when things aren't going well, and then work towards how you can achieve a state where more measures aren't necessary.

Planning Changes For Tomorrow

Your ideal state will be much more fun to think about and implement. Even if you need to shift to a culture of "never missing a deadline" “ you get to think through sustainable practices to help with that. Does this mean a more inclusive estimation process? Staff increases? Different rates charged to clients? Staff augmentation/ etc?

Usually, the ways you get to the ideal state for how you operate with a team that also respects you and is motivated positively to work their best are going to take time, politics, and money.

You need to chart this out, get directional buy-in from stakeholders and work on it at whatever timeline is feasible. Having this get clear faster will allow you to be transparent with how you want things to improve with your team. This builds trust and helps individuals understand that the short-term burn is a survival tactic, not an enduring culture.

Outside The Office

Culture And Your Home

We spend a lot of time working on being highly effective leaders often at great cost to our families. A practice I recommend is to take EVERY business learning and practice and find ways to leverage it for your home life.

I have half a dozen Kanban boards I use for personal work, and a reading list just as long for being a good husband as I do for being a dad as I do for a technology leader.

Your home life has a culture as well and it's measured and changed the same way as a culture is changed at work, but with a couple of leg differences.

Your partner(s) don't report to you. So everything is more in line with stakeholder management. How do you bring up the topic of change? How do you get their buy-in to what you need to do today and what you want to achieve in the future? How can your actions alone begin to bring about this change? What will be the short-term discomfort and is it worth that for the long-term goal?

I encourage you to plan this just as thoughtfully and find ways to plan how this also integrates into your office leadership style. A well-integrated and emotionally balanced life is more valuable and sustainable than work/life separation.